Law Commons^™

Do Esg Funds Deliver On Their Promises?, Quinn Curtis, Jill E. Fisch, Adriana Z. Robertson

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporations have received growing criticism for their role in climate change, perpetuating racial and gender inequality, and other pressing social issues. In response to these concerns, shareholders are increasingly focusing on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) criteria in selecting investments, and asset managers are responding by offering a growing number of ESG mutual funds. The flow of assets into ESG is one of the most dramatic trends in asset management.

But are these funds giving investors what they promise? This question has attracted the attention of regulators, with the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) …

23rd Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act Powerpoint Presentation 07-30-2021, Office Of Attorney General State Of Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Climate Change As Systemic Risk, Barnali Choudhury

Articles & Book Chapters

Hindsight tells us that COVID-19, thought by former President Trump and others to have come out of nowhere, is more aptly labelled a “gray rhino” event, one that was highly probable and preventable. Indeed, despite considerable evidence of the impending threats of pandemics, for the most part, governments failed to prepare for the pandemic, resulting in wide-scale social and economic losses.

The lessons from COVID-19, however, should remind us of the perils of ignoring gray rhino risks. Nowhere is this more apparent than with climate change, a highly probable, high impact threat that has largely been ignored to date. Despite …

Transparency For Whom? Grounding Land Investment Transparency In The Needs Of Local Actors, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Transparency is often seen as a means of improving governance and accountability of investment, but its potential to do so is hindered by vague definitions and failures to focus on the needs of key local actors.

In this new report focusing on agribusiness, forestry, and renewable energy projects (“land investments”), CCSI grounds transparency in the needs of project-affected communities and other local actors. Transparency efforts that seek to inform and empower communities can also help governments, companies, and other actors to more effectively manage operational risk linked to social conflict.

Troublingly, the report finds that:

• Disclosures around land investments continue …

An Overview Of Brokercheck And The Central Registration Depository, Christine Lazaro, Albert Copeland

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Securities brokers are governed by a unique regulatory framework, subject to both extensive state and federal statutory and regulatory regimes. The vast bulk of federal regulation and oversight of brokers and brokerage firms has been delegated to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”), a self-regulatory organization with the power to govern its members’ conduct. FINRA operates under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), a federal agency established by the federal securities laws.

FINRA was created on July 26, 2007 through the consolidation of the National Association of Securities Dealers (“NASD”) and the member regulation, enforcement …

Pure Privacy, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

n 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis began a storied legal tradition of trying to conceptualize privacy. Since that time, privacy's appeal has grown beyond those authors' wildest expectations, but its essence remains elusive. One of the rare points of agreement in boisterous academic privacy debates is that there is no consensus on what privacy means.

The modern trend is to embrace the ambiguity. Unable to settle on boundaries, scholars welcome a broad array of interests into an expanding theoretical framework. As a result, privacy is invoked in debates about COVID-19 contact tracing, police body cameras, marriage equality, facial recognition, …

Corporate Family Matters, Carliss N. Chatman

Scholarly Articles

Corporate groups dominate the American economy. Known publicly by a single name—Chevron, Apple, McDonald’s, or Google—these companies are a web of affiliated entities, each with its own separate legal identity. Yet, corporate laws have failed to develop a statutory scheme that acknowledges these relationships among entities. While corporate personhood, separateness, and the accompanying liability protection are the primary reasons for using the corporate form, or business entities in general, form can be exploited by bad actors who seek to take advantage of the natural legal silos that define each legal entity in a corporate group as a stand-alone person. These …

Maintaining Client Privacy In An Increasingly Public World, Anne-Marie E. Rhodes, Mel M. Justak

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Individuals have long been interested in protecting their private family and financial matters from broad public disclosure. Motives vary, of course, but can range from safety concerns to saving certain family members from public embarrassment that could jeopardize future busi­ ness and social opportunities. 1 While motives may have changed little over time, the urgency to protect privacy is more pronounced in today's world.2 For example, 100 years ago the primary vehicle for wide dissemi­ nation of news - including a family's or individual's private matters - was newspapers. While disclosure through this medium could certainly be embarrassing, the disclosure …

Law Library Blog (January 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

A Response To Calls For Sec Mandated Esg Disclosure, Amanda M. Rose

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article responds to recent proposals calling for the SEC to adopt a mandatory ESG-disclosure framework. It illustrates how the breadth and vagueness of these proposals obscures the important--and controversial-- policy questions that would need to be addressed before the SEC could move forward on the proposals in a principled way. The questions raised include some of the most contested in the field of corporate and securities law, such as the value of interjurisdictional competition for corporate charters, the right way to conceptualize the purpose of the corporation, the proper allocation of managerial power as between the board and shareholders, …

Esg And Climate Change Blind Spots: Turning The Corner On Sec Disclosure, Cynthia A. Williams, Donna M. Nagy

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article examines four areas in which the SEC, for more than a decade, resisted reform or impeded shareholders’ access to sought-after environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information. These areas are: (1) the SEC’s refusal to act on several rulemaking petitions submitted during the years 2009 to 2018, which called for expanded ESG disclosure; (2) the SEC’s grudging promulgation of rules concerning social disclosures as required by Congress in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010; (3) the SEC’s 2020 revisions to SEC Rule 14a-8, which make the submission of shareholder proposals more difficult, thereby thwarting investor efforts to raise ESG concerns; …

Pension Fiduciaries And Climate Change: A Canadian Perspective, Maziar Peihani

All Faculty Publications

Climate change has emerged as a major issue of financial risk for Canadian pension funds when determining where to place investments. The author argues that while such pension funds recognize climate change as an issue that holds the potential for significant financial risk, the funds’ current approach to climate-related risks faces critical limitations. The author identifies the current practices of the five largest pension funds in Canada when faced with climate-related financial risks, then discusses the key shortcomings in current practices among the pension funds in three main areas.
First, the author examines organizational governance, which seeks to understand investment …

Mandating Disclosure Of Climate-Related Financial Risk, Madison Condon, Sarah Ladin, Jack Lienke, Michael Panfil, Alexander Song

Faculty Scholarship

Climate change presents grave risk across the U.S. economy, including to corporations, their investors, the markets in which they operate, and the American public at large. Unlike other financial risks, however, climate risk is not routinely disclosed to the public. Insufficient corporate disclosures have persisted despite the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) issuance of regulatory guidance on the topic, the emergence of voluntary disclosure frameworks and standards, and growing calls from major investors for improved disclosure. Given the inadequacy of the current regime, the SEC should take further action to fulfill its statutory mandate to protect investors and promote efficiency, …

The Future Of Disclosure: Esg, Common Ownership, And Systematic Risk, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. securities markets have recently undergone (or are undergoing) three fundamental transitions: (1) institutionalization (with the result that institutional investors now dominate both trading and stock ownership); (2) extraordinary ownership concentration (with the consequence that the three largest U.S. institutional investors now hold 20% and vote 25% of the shares in S&P 500 companies); and (3) the introduction of ESG disclosures (which process has been driven in the U.S. by pressure from large institutional investors). In light of these transitions, how should disclosure policy change? Do institutions and retail investors have the same or different disclosure needs? Why are …

Disclosing Discrimination, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the United States, enforcement of laws prohibiting workplace discrimination rests almost entirely on the shoulders of employee victims, who must first file charges with a government agency and then pursue litigation themselves. While the law forbids retaliation against employees who complain, this does little to prevent it, in part because employees are also responsible for initiating any claims of retaliation they experience as a result of their original discrimination claims. The burden on employees to complain—and their justified fear of retaliation if they do so—results in underenforcement of the law and a failure to spot and redress underlying structural …