Law Commons^™

How To Understand China's Approach To Central Bank Digital Currency?, Heng Wang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

China's central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital yuan or e-CNY, is likely to profoundly affect the international financial system. China's CBDC is fast evolving. Understanding the influencing factors of China's CBDC will likely be crucial to explore its future direction. Major influencing factors include (i) China's perception and conception of regulation and technology, (ii) complementarity between China's preferences and CBDC development, (iii) domestic and international legitimacy, and (iv) institutional development. This paper argues that these influencing factors contribute to China's likely approach of selectively reshaping the international financial system. Given the potential wide-ranging implications of the introduction of CBDC globally, …

Fraud In A Land Of Plenty, Jonathan R. Macey

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay discusses the regulation of fraud in a developed economy and offers some explanations for why fraud appears to be on the increase. Ironically, regulation designed to combat fraud can actually increase fraud by attracting economic activity to fraud-ridden industries. In other words, regulation can create problems of its own by fostering the false perception that fraud is being addressed even when it is not. This analysis is relevant in the context of the current surge in sentiment to regulate cryptocurrencies in the wake of the FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried debacle. Such regulation threatens to attract more resources to …

Health Care Fraud And The Erosion Of Trust, Katrice Bridges Copeland

Northwestern University Law Review

In health care, trust is a foundational concept. Patients must trust that their medical practitioners are competent to treat them. The trustworthiness of medical practitioners encourages patients to disclose intimate facts about their medical issues. Further, patients must trust health care providers to demonstrate impartial concern for the patients’ well-being, also known as fidelity. In providing care, the needs of the patients, rather than financial incentives, must drive medical practitioners. Without this trust, patients may not cooperate with diagnosis and treatment. In addition to trusting providers, care outcomes are better if patients trust the health care system as a whole. …

Office Of Attorney General Peter F. Neronha, Attorney General: Access To Public Records Act, Open Meetings Act, Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Cyber Plungers: Colonial Pipeline And The Case For An Omnibus Cybersecurity Legislation, Asaf Lubin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The May 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline was a wake-up call for a federal administration slow to realize the dangers that cybersecurity threats pose to our critical national infrastructure. The attack forced hundreds of thousands of Americans along the east coast to stand in endless lines for gas, spiking both prices and public fears. These stressors on our economy and supply chains triggered emergency proclamations in four states, including Georgia. That a single cyberattack could lead to a national emergency of this magnitude was seen by many as proof of even more crippling threats to come. Executive Director of …

A Legal History Of The Regulation Of Assault-Style Rifles In Canada, R. Blake Brown

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article provides the first legal history of the regulation of “assault-style” weapons in Canada. A contentious part of Canada’s gun control regime is the firearms classification system that divides guns into non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited firearms. The sale of semi-automatic firearms, often based on military designs that could be quickly fired and reloaded, sparked concerns since the 1970s, particularly after mass shooting events. Canada adopted a classification regime relying on both statutory provisions that used technical details of firearms and Orders-in-Council to name models of firearms as restricted or prohibited weapons. Critics warned that this system allowed private citizens …

Is A Child's Life Twice As Valuable As An Adult's?, W. Kip Viscusi

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The rise of interest in evidence-based policymaking has created incentives for regulatory agencies to demonstrate the overall benefit-cost merits of their policies. An agency can use evidence to choose more cost-beneficial policies, or it can create the appearance of desirable policies by changing the ground rules by which it assesses a policy's merits.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently chose the latter course when monetizing the benefit of mortality risk reductions for children from a proposed safety standard for operating cords on custom window coverings. The cords are currently estimated to be responsible for nine fatal injuries annually. Each …

Administrative Regulation Of Programmatic Policing: Why "Leaders Of A Beautiful Struggle" Is Both Right And Wrong, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Aerial Investigation Research (AIR), Baltimore's aerial surveillance program, violated the Fourth Amendment because it was not authorized by a warrant. AIR was constitutionaly problematic, but not for the reason given by the Fourth Circuit. AIR, like many other technologically-enhanced policing programs that rely on closed-circuit television (CCTV), automated license plate readers and the like, involves the collection and retention of information about huge numbers ofpeople. Because individualized suspicion does not exist with respect to any of these people's information, an individual-specific warrant …

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

Marquette Law Review

None.

The Relevance Of Fda Regulation In Medical Device Product Defect Cases, Edward Correia

DePaul Journal of Health Care Law

Medical device product cases typically involve a jury determination whether a product is unreasonably dangerous. If the product has been cleared for marketing by the Food and Drug Administration, it has been through an extensive regulatory process in which the safety of the product is potentially reviewed by experts. Nevertheless, a number of courts have concluded that juries should not hear about FDA regulation in making factual findings regarding liability and damages.

What the FDA concludes about the safety of a product can be extremely relevant to juries in deciding whether to find there was a defective product and whether …

Cosmetic Crisis: The Obsolete Regulatory Framework Of The Ever-Evolving Cosmetic Industry, Isabelle M. Carbajales

University of Miami Law Review

Cosmetics only first became regulated after a series of tragic events where users were seriously harmed from the use of cosmetic products. These tragic events prompted legislators to enact the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938. Before then, law makers feared that regulating the cosmetic industry would lower the tone of legislation because they considered the cosmetic industry to be inconsequential. At present, the regulatory system in place to protect vulnerable cosmetic consumers is nearly identical to when it was enacted over eighty-six years ago—even though the cosmetic market looks nothing like it did back then. The consumer base …

Grid Governance In The Energy-Trilemma Era: Remedying The Democracy Deficit, Daniel E. Walters, Andrew N. Kleit

Faculty Scholarship

Transforming the electric power grid is central to any viable scenario for addressing global climate change, but the process and politics of this transformation are complex. The desire to transform the grid creates an “energy trilemma” involving often conflicting desires for reliability, cost, and decarbonization; and, at least in the short run, it is difficult to avoid making tradeoffs between these different goals. It is somewhat shocking, then, that many crucial decisions about electric power service in the United States are made not by consumers or their utilities, nor by state public utilities commissions or federal regulators. Instead, for much …

Globalize Me: Regulating Distributed Ledger Technology, Roee Sarel, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Israel Klein

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)—the technology underlying cryptocurrencies—has been identified by many as a game-changer for data storage. Although DLT can solve acute problems of trust and coor- dination whenever entities (e.g., firms, traders, or even countries) rely on a shared database, it has mostly failed to reach mass adoption out- side the context of cryptocurrencies.

A prime reason for this failure is the extreme state of regulation, which was largely absent for many years but is now pouring down via uncoordinated regulatory initiatives by different countries. Both of these extremes—under-regulation and over-regulation—are consistent with traditional concepts from law and economics. …

The Power Of The Purse: Instigating Social Change Through Strategic Municipal Bond Investments, Jenna Reifler

University of Miami Business Law Review

Municipal bonds are generally understood as mutually beneficial for both issuer and holder—they allow cities to secure capital for local improvements and investors to earn reliable and tax-exempt profits. It turns out, however, that the lack of disclosure for issuing general obligation bonds presents the perfect camouflage for cities to secure funding despite their local social responsibility inadequacies.

Cities quietly shell out millions of dollars in settlements to the victims of police-misconduct. Largely unreported and untracked, many municipalities fund such settlements through general obligation bonds, which are colloquially termed police brutality bonds. As a result, and often unbeknownst to the …

Taking Care Of Business: An Empirical Examination Of The Top S&P 500 Companies And Their Role As Public Health Regulators During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Megan M. O’Malley

University of Miami Business Law Review

Data from the top 15 constituents by weight on the S&P 500 is assembled to identify trends among the policies these companies implemented in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some policies were fairly consistent across the board, especially in regard to remote work opportunities and health and safety measures for essential and/or in-person employees. Other policies, including vaccination requirements and vaccine incentives, varied across and within industries. Some companies that were examined went beyond the relevant federal, state, or local requirements in effect at the time, while other companies pushed back against public health guidance.

Entity Of The State: The Transparency Of Restricting Telecommunications Firms As Threats To America’S National Security, Benjamin W. Cramer

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

This paper analyzes recent American regulations regarding international telecommunications firms that have been restricted from doing business in the United States, as apparent threats to national security. The paper will include policy-oriented research into the relevant legislation, plus more theoretical research on the framing of geopolitical disputes and the transparency of the resulting regulatory actions. There has been some suspicion from journalists and government watchdogs that such restrictions are politically motivated, with dramatic claims of national security threats leading to non-transparent trade regulations. This paper discusses the framing of geopolitical disputes and their impact on trade policy in the telecommunications …

U.S. Cryptocurrency Regulation: A Slowly Evolving State Of Affairs, Aaron Poynton

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

After nearly a decade and a half since the creation of the first cryptocurrency, crypto regulation in the United States is fragmented, with different measures taken at the federal and state levels, and even within and among agencies. This sluggish speed is not necessarily a surprise as government regulation has always chased rapid advancements in technology and associated consumer and market behavior changes. However, this is a precarious position for the United States--and the world--as the U.S. is a leader in the global financial community, the high concentration of crypto-based wealth, and economies’ increasingly interconnected and interdependent nature. This working …

The Future Of Natural Property Law: Comments On Eric Claeys's Natural Property Rights, Christopher Serkin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Professor Eric Claeys is among the most thoughtful modern proponents of natural property rights. His new book, provided to conference participants in draft form, is typical of his rigorously analytical approach. It is an impressive articulation of a natural rights-based account of property. It significantly advances the debate over natural rights and should be taken seriously even by those who do not find it entirely convincing.

There are real-world political stakes in abstract-seeming questions of property theory because natural rights are often deployed to limit government regulation of property. Natural rights contrast with positivist accounts that locate the content of …

How Far Does Natural Law Protect Private Property, James W. Ely Jr.

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article first explores the ambiguous relationship between natural law and the rights of property owners in American history. It points out that invocation of natural law principles was frequently conflated with English common law guarantees of property rights in the Revolutionary Era. Reliance on natural law as a source of protection for private property faded during the nineteenth century and was largely rejected in the early twentieth century. The Article then considers the extent to which natural law principles are useful in addressing contemporary issues relating to eminent domain and police power regulation of private property. Taking a skeptical …

The Scope Of Compelling Government Interests, R. George Wright

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

In constitutional cases, any relevant government interest may be said to vary in its breadth or scope. Government interests can be characterized narrowly or broadly. The narrowness or breadth of how courts choose to formulate a government interest may well affect that interest’s overall weight or legal significance. For example, a public interest in safety and security, broadly conceived, may seem compelling. But the public interest in merely some modest upgrading of a safety and security regulation may seem less than compelling. A court might adopt either description. A court’s choice to characterize the government interest at stake as either …

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 …

To Spac Or Not To Spac: Liberalizing The Regulation Of Capital Markets, Allison N. Swecker

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The merger and acquisition world has experienced an uptick in deal flow since 2016, reaching unprecedented levels in 2020 due to enhanced private equity funding and market volatility. While the market volatility spurred by COVID-19 halted traditional initial public offerings (IPOs), the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) market exploded. The flurry of SPAC activity in the United States triggered the development of SPAC markets worldwide. Unfortunately, SPACs’ great rise to fame in the past few years has come at a cost-—fraud. As such, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is left grappling with how to best regulate the market …

Globalize Me: Regulating Distributed Ledger Technology, Roee Sarel, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Israel Klein

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)—the technology underlying cryptocurrencies—has been identified by many as a game-changer for data storage. Although DLT can solve acute problems of trust and coor- dination whenever entities (e.g., firms, traders, or even countries) rely on a shared database, it has mostly failed to reach mass adoption outside the context of cryptocurrencies.

A prime reason for this failure is the extreme state of regulation, which was largely absent for many years but is now pouring down via uncoordinated regulatory initiatives by different countries. Both of these extremes-—under-regulation and over-regulation—-are consistent with traditional concepts from law and economics. Specifically, …

Efficiency And Equity In Regulation, Caroline Cecot

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Biden Administration has signaled an interest in ensuring that regulations appropriately benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Prior presidential administrations since at least the Reagan Administration have focused on ensuring that regulations are efficient, maximizing the net benefits to society as a whole, without considering who benefits or who loses from these policies. Critics of this process of regulatory review have celebrated President Biden’s initiative, hoping that distributional analysis and the pursuit of equity will displace traditional tools and interests such as cost-benefit analysis and the pursuit of efficiency. Meanwhile, supporters of the current process are concerned that pursuing equity …

Ambiguities And Absences: Occupational Health And Safety Regulation Of Platform-Mediated Work In Ontario, Canada, Eric Tucker

Articles & Book Chapters

Platform-mediated work, whether location-based, as in the case of Uber, or cloud-based, as in the case of Amazon Mechanical Turk, poses severe challenges to effective occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. While the work performed in the platform environment is not usually very different from work performed in more traditional employment settings, the platform environment often exacerbates those risks by, for example, increasing stress and incentivizing long hours and work intensification. Regulating these hazards is impeded by ambiguities surrounding the legal relationship between platform operators and platform workers that make it uncertain whether the OHS regime even applies. As well …

The Freedom Of Influencing, Hannibal Travis

University of Miami Law Review

Social media stars and the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) Act are clashing. Influencer marketing is a preferred way for entertainers, pundits, and everyday people to monetize their audiences and popularity. Manufacturers, service providers, retailers, and advertising agencies leverage influencers to reach into millions or even billions of consumer devices, capturing minutes or seconds of the market’s fleeting attention. FTC enforcement actions and private lawsuits have targeted influencers for failing to disclose the nature of a sponsorship relationship with a manufacturer, marketer, or service provider. Such a failure to disclose payments prominently is very common in Hollywood films and on radio …

Condominium Law: How Florida Must Continue To Adapt In The Wake Of The Champlain Towers South Collapse, Austin Price

University of Miami Law Review

Condominiums represent a large portion of the housing inventory throughout the state of Florida. However, until recently, the maintenance of condominium buildings was left largely unregulated in most areas of the state. Only two counties, Broward and Miami-Dade, had inspection protocols in place, but each was limited in scope and allowed for long periods between inspections. Beyond those regulations, Florida law also gave residents the power to waive reserves even for the most important building components. After the tragic events that took place at Champlain Towers South, the state of Florida made great strides in improving the existing procedures by …

Outsourcing Agency Rulemaking, Christopher J. Walker

Reviews

When it comes to understanding the political dynamics of agency rulemaking, the place to start is Rachel Potter’s book Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy, about which the Yale Journal on Regulation published a blog symposium in 2019. Through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, Potter explores how agency officials—both career civil servants and political appointees—play a role in the rulemaking process and leverage procedural rules to help advance their preferred policy outcomes.

A Major Answer To The Major Questions Doctrine, Edward L. Rubin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Supreme Court’s use of the major questions doctrine in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency to invalidate the agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emission has elicited widespread criticism from commentators. David Driesen’s contribution to this chorus of condemnation goes to the heart of the issue, focusing on the role that the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself in reaching this decision.

The Court’s based its decision on the relationship between Congress and the Executive, speaking at length about the structural roles of these two institutions. What it forgot, as Professor Driesen notes, is that the Court is also an …

Regulatory Sandboxes Enable Pragmatic Blockchain Regulation, Joshua Durham

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Since blockchain technology supports digitally-native money, the centralized chokepoints that governments have traditionally targeted to regulate commerce no longer apply to our (digital) property. However, competent regulation furthers basic public policy goals and should enable responsible innovation of this promising technology. This Article discusses pragmatic policies that enable responsible innovation by cultivating regulatory expertise required to write enforceable rules. Responsible innovation is necessary because unlike the early internet, where programmers could manipulate simple colors and text on webpages, these same individuals can now create financial services applications that manipulate actual money—we are faced with an inescapable reality that more is …