Law Commons^™

Boden Lecture: The Past’S Lessons For Today: Can Common-Carrier Principles Make For A Better Internet?, James B. Speta

Marquette Law Review

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Is It Time For Federal Regulation Of The Tax Preparer Industry? New Insights From Legal And Empirical Developments, Jessica A. Magaldi, Matthew Reidenbach, Jonathan S. Sales, John S. Treu

Marquette Law Review

The tax preparer industry is unusual in that it involves the interpretation of an intricate and complicated tax code, but imposes no minimum requirements of competency because the industry is largely unregulated. A study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) indicated that unregulated tax preparers commit significantly higher error rates and, based in part on that study’s findings, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) attempted to regulate the tax preparer industry nationwide under the Registered Tax Return Preparer (RTRP) regime. This RTRP program was invalidated in Loving v. IRS, however, leaving the industry largely unregulated, except in the small minority …

Legal Implications Of A Ubiquitous Metaverse And A Web3 Future, Jon M. Garon

Marquette Law Review

The metaverse is understood to be an immersive virtual world serving as the locus for all forms of work, education, and entertainment experiences. Depicted in books, movies, and games, the metaverse has the potential not just to supplement real-world experiences but to substantially supplant them. This Article explores the rapid emergence and evolution of the Web3 technologies at the heart of the metaverse movement. Web3 itself is a paradigmatic shift in internet commerce.

Informational Regulation, The Environment, And The Public, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Marquette Law Review

Informational Regulation, the Environment, and the Public generates a typology to analyze how public disclosure functions in informational regulation. In the environmental context, informational regulation compels the public disclosure of environmental information without mandating substantive environmental outcomes in the expectation that disclosure itself will prompt beneficial change in the environmental context. Application of the Article’s typology reveals that the emperor has no clothes: Communication of environmental information to the public is considered central to policies employing informational regulation, but the information produced pursuant to these measures largely fails to reach or be understood by lay individuals. For example, empirical data …

Safe Money, John Crawford

Marquette Law Review

This Article provides the first comprehensive survey and evaluation of proposed approaches to the central financial reform issue of our era: making all money held in account form “safe,” or non-defaultable, in the same way a dollar bill cannot default. Financial crises are at core a problem of defaultable money; preventing such crises requires making money safe. The goal is eminently achievable; indeed, a number of plausible proposals have been advanced. The project has two aspects: providing better safe money options and eliminating unsafe money. This Article analyzes safe money approaches and concludes that expanding “base” money—that is, direct claims …

Cannabis Legalization In State Legislatures: Public Health Opportunity And Risk, Daniel G. Orenstein, Stanton A. Glantz

Marquette Law Review

Cannabis is widely used in the United States and internationally despite its illicit status, but that illicit status is changing. In the United States, thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical cannabis, and eleven states and D.C. have legalized adult use cannabis. A majority of state medical cannabis laws and all but two state adult use laws are the result of citizen ballot initiatives, but state legislatures are beginning to seriously consider adult use legislation. From a public health perspective, cannabis legalization presents a mix of potential risks and benefits, but a legislative approach offers an opportunity …

Bitcoin, Virtual Currencies, And The Struggle Of Law And Regulation To Keep Pace

Marquette Law Review

At less than a decade old, Bitcoin and other virtual currencies have had a major societal impact, and proven to be a unique payment systems challenge for law enforcement, financial regulatory authorities worldwide, and the investment community. Rapid introduction and diffusion of technological changes throughout society, such as the blockchain that serves as Bitcoin’s crypto-foundation, continue to exceed the ability of law and regulation to keep pace. During 2017 alone, the market price of Bitcoin rose 1,735%, from about $970 to $14,292, causing an investor feeding frenzy. As of September 11, 2018, a total of 1,935 cryptocurrencies are reported, having …

Mutual Fund Capital Structure, A. Joseph Warburton

Marquette Law Review

The Investment Company Act of 1940 regulates the capital structure of mutual funds in order to restrain their leverage and speculative character. It is often (mistakenly) assumed that the law prohibits open-end mutual funds from borrowing money. This Article (I) analyzes the law governing mutual fund capital structure to reveal when (and to what extent) borrowing is allowed and (ii) examines a novel dataset on mutual fund capital structure that shows borrowing is an unexpectedly common practice.

Using data on all registered investment companies in the U.S. from 1998 to 2013, I find that nearly 8% of open-end mutual funds, …

The Original Understanding Of "Property" In The Constitution, Paul J. Larkin Jr.

Marquette Law Review

Contemporary Supreme Court jurisprudence treats “property” as far less deserving of judicial protection than “life” or “liberty.” The Supreme Court, however, has misread American legal history. Anglo-American traditions, customs, and law held that property was an essential ingredient of the liberty that the Colonists had come to enjoy and must be protected against arbitrary governmental interference. The Framers’ generation believed that “property” and “liberty” were equally important institutions and that neither one could exist without the other. The Framers venerated property as a means of guaranteeing personal independence because (among other things) the concept of “property” embraced the legal rights …

A Framework On Mandating Versus Incentivizing Corporate Social Responsibility, Margaret Ryznar, Karen E. Woody

Marquette Law Review

There are two primary but different methods of controlling behavior, whether it is the behavior of individuals or corporations: to incentivize it or to regulate it. Governments are in a unique position to employ either or both options because of their ability to pass regulatory schemes and to extend tax incentives. This Article analyzes the two methods of shaping corporate behavior, examining the regulation issue through the case of the conflict minerals provision of the Dodd–Frank Act and examining the taxation issue through several examples of corporate tax incentives.