Law Commons^™

A River Runs Through It: The Jobs Act’S Course Through Crowdfunding, Towards Stable Returns On Investment In Real Estate, Devin Finlayson

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Regtech, Compliance And Technology Judgement Rule, Nizan Geslevich Packin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

This Article focuses on the rise of Financial Technology, which revolutionized consumer financial service products, and challenged policymakers with regulating the rapidly evolving financial industry. In particular, it explores Regulatory Technology, also known as RegTech, which is the finance industry’s use of technology, especially information technology, in the context of regulatory monitoring, reporting and compliance. RegTech is designed to solve industry needs for a more effective and efficient way to automate corporate governance and compliance processes. Not only has FinTech proven to be a vital revenue source, especially in connection with lending or money transmission services, but it also helps …

High‐Frequency Trading And The New Stock Market: Sense And Nonsense, Merritt B. Fox, Lawrence R. Glosten, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Articles

The stock market has been transformed during the last 25 years. Human suppliers of liquidity like the NASDAQ dealers and NYSE specialists have been replaced by algorithmic market making; stocks that once traded on a single venue now trade across twelve exchanges and a multitude of alternative trading systems. New venues like dark pools, and new participants like high‐frequency traders, have emerged to take on prominent roles. This new market has had more than its share of controversy and regulatory scrutiny, particularly in the wake of Michael Lewis’s bestseller Flash Boys. In this article, the authors analyze five of the …

Beyond Intermediary Liability: The Future Of Information Platforms - Workshop Report, Tiffany Li

Faculty Scholarship

On February 13, 2018, WIII hosted the workshop, “Beyond Intermediary Liability: The Future of Information Platforms.” Leading experts from industry, civil society, and academia convened at Yale Law School for a series of non-public, guided discussions. The roundtable of experts considered pressing questions related to intermediary liability and the rights, roles, and responsibilities of information platforms in society. Based on conversations from the workshop, WIII published a free, publicly available report detailing the most critical issues necessary for understanding the role of information platforms, such as Facebook and Google, in law and society today. The report highlights insights and questions …

Prospective Grandfathering: Anticipating The Energy Transition Problem, Christopher Serkin, Michael P. Vandenbergh

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Legal change has the potential to disrupt settled expectations and property rights. The Takings Clause provides protection from the most significant costs by requiring compensation following a change in the law, but threats of takings claims can discourage policymakers from adopting sound laws and policies. If specific legal changes can be anticipated far enough in advance, are there tactics available to reduce the risk of takings claims and blunt their political force in the future? We identify innovative tools that preserve regulatory flexibility so that legal changes can avoid takings liability, and we do so specifically in the context of …

Grasping For Energy Democracy, Shelley Welton

Michigan Law Review

Until recently, energy law has attracted relatively little citizen participation. Instead, Americans have preferred to leave matters of energy governance to expert bureaucrats. But the imperative to respond to climate change presents energy regulators with difficult choices over what our future energy sources should be, and how quickly we should transition to them—choices that are outside traditional regulatory expertise. For example, there are currently robust nationwide debates over what role new nuclear power plants and hydraulically fractured natural gas should play in our energy mix, and over how to maintain affordable energy for all while rewarding those who choose to …

Perfecting Procreation, Courtney Cahill

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Localism, Labels, And Animal Welfare, Samuel R. Wiseman

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

The law does relatively little to improve the welfare of animals raised for food. In the short term, at least, market-based solutions appear to have more promise as a means of promoting farm animal welfare, as consumers increasingly seek out local and humanely-raised meat and eggs. To aid consumers in identifying these products, certification systems of varying degrees of rigor exist, but even these are of little use to consumers in the restaurant context, which accounts for a large percentage of meat consumption. Patrons see only finished meals, making fraud difficult to detect, and a recent newspaper investigation suggests that …

Pluralism And Regulatory Response To The Sharing Economy, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

Providers use platforms in dissimilar ways. Some providers create new capacity and designate it for exclusively commercial use via platforms. For example, a provider buys a car that serves predominantly for driving paying passengers, converts a standard residential rental to a short-term rental, or works full-time via a platform. Conversely, other providers leverage their idle capacity and monetize it (e.g., a provider uses the family car to drive platform passengers in the evenings). This chapter argues that the distinction between new and idle capacity is a fundamental concept that should guide regulation of activities in the platform economy. Creating new …

Understanding Administrative Sanctioning As Corrective Justice, Eithan Y. Kidron

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

When should a regulator prefer criminal sanctions over administrative sanctions? What procedural protections should apply if a process is labeled civil but the sanctions are, in fact, criminal in type? And can the state justifiably conduct parallel proceedings for punitive sanctions against the same person or entity for the same conduct?

Throughout the years, judges and scholars alike have tried to understand and classify administrative sanctioning. Common to all of these conceptions is their failure to provide a complete normative framework for this unique body of law, which in turn makes it difficult to identify its practical limits and to …

Food, Fracking, And Folly, Melissa Mortazavi

Faculty Articles

Few industries in the United States carry the clout and capital of the oil and gas and agricultural sectors. Economic behemoths, their booms and busts shape the destinies of states, define national policy, and secure the life or death of small towns across the United States. Like it or not, the agriculture and oil and gas industries have strong lobbies and vehement and mobilized constituencies. Recent years have seen both sectors facing public push-back on modern trends in extraction, growth, and methods of production. In response to these developments, these industries have used their considerable political capital to seek new …

Regulate Or Be Regulated: Why Professional Landmen Should Be Proactive In Protecting The Integrity Of Their Occupation, Brian J. Steinocher

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In most states, the landman profession is unregulated and free to define itself. Work performed by landmen often flirts with the practice of law, but under Texas law much of the work that landmen perform is excepted from the unlicensed practice of law. Historically, the American Association of Professional Landmen (“AAPL”) has been influential in guaranteeing that this exception stays available to landmen all over the United States and that landmen are not subject to licensing requirements in the states they work in. In light of the recent, unsuccessful attempt by the Texas legislature to regulate landmen, this Article will …

The Regulation Of Trading Markets: A Survey And Evaluation, Paul G. Mahoney, Gabriel V. Rauterberg

Book Chapters

This chapter was prepared for a conference exploring the desirability and structure of a new special study of the securities markets. Our objective is not to resolve all of the questions that commentators have raised about the new equity markets, but to lay the groundwork for a new special study by surveying the state of market regulation, identifying issues, and offering preliminary evaluations.

Why Examples? Towards More Behaviorally-Intelligent Regulation, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

Tax regulation authors habitually infuse regulations with explanatory examples. These examples are viewed favorably by both the government that encourages their drafting and the taxpayers who regularly rely on such examples to assist them in dealing with the notoriously complex tax rules. Despite the ubiquity of these examples, there is no published guidance for their drafting, their use, or their interpretation. The first original contribution of this article is the exposition and classification of the advantages and deficiencies in the current use of examples in tax regulations. This article is the first to question the rationale behind the ubiquitous use …

More Ways To Protect Llc Owners And Preserve Llc Flexibility, Peter Molk

UF Law Faculty Publications

This online companion to Protecting LLC Owners While Preserving LLC Flexibility considers several alternative approaches that might unify LLCs’ twin goals of owner protection and governance flexibility. I examine self-regulation, private certification, investor-led market forces, lawyers in their gatekeeping capacity, and mandated disclosure systems. Ultimately, each of these alternatives proves less satisfying than a system that bifurcates LLC law based on the presumed sophistication of LLC owners.

Renovations Needed: The Fda's Floor/Ceiling Framework, Preemption, And The Opioid Epidemic, Michael R. Abrams

Michigan Law Review

The FDA’s regulatory framework for pharmaceuticals uses a “floor/ceiling” model: administrative rules set a “floor” of minimum safety, while state tort liability sets a “ceiling” of maximum protection. This model emphasizes premarket scrutiny but largely relies on the state common law “ceiling” to police the postapproval drug market. As the Supreme Court increasingly holds state tort law preempted by federal administrative standards, the FDA’s framework becomes increasingly imbalanced. In the face of a historic prescription medication overdose crisis, the Opioid Epidemic, this imbalance allows the pharmaceutical industry to avoid internalizing the public health costs of their opioid products. This Note …

Regulatory Cooperation In International Trade And Its Transformative Effects On Executive Power, Elizabeth Trujillo

Faculty Scholarship

As international trade receives the brunt of local discontent with globalization trends and recent changes by the Trump administration have put into question the viability of such trade arrangements moving forward, there has been a clear trend in using international trade fora for managing regulatory barriers on economic development. This paper will discuss this recent trend in international trade toward increased regulatory cooperation through the creation of formalized transnational regulatory bodies, such as the U.S.-EU Regulatory Cooperation Body that was being discussed in the TTIP negotiations and comparable ones in the Canadian-EU Trade Agreement as well as U.S.-Mexico and U.S.- …

Toward A Principled Design Of Provincial Cap & Trade Systems: Lessons From Nova Scotia's Proposal To Meet The Carbon Pricing Requirement In The Pan-Canadian Framework For Climate Change, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the Cap & Trade System proposed by the province of Nova Scotia in response to the call in the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change for all provinces to implement a carbon pricing mechanism. The proposed C & T system itself and the way it has been developed offers insights into ongoing debates in the governance of climate mitigation. The first debate is about the strength and weaknesses of various carbon pricing mechanisms, most notably the carbon tax and cap and trade systems. The second debate is about the relative importance of carbon pricing and …

The Burden Of A Good Idea: Examining The Impact Of Unfunded Federal Regulatory Mandates On Medicare Participating Hospitals, Rachel Juhas Suddarth

Law Faculty Publications

Health care costs are on the rise. In 1960, the United States spent $9 billion on hospital care. Since then, hospital related spending has grown exponentially. In 2015, the United States spent over $1 trillion on hospital care, with $359.9 billion of those payments coming from the federal Medicare program for the aged and disabled. Researchers have long tried to understand the exact causes of rising health care costs. While many have closely examined the costs associated with population demographics, medical innovation, prescription drug costs, overutilization of services, and fraud or abuse, there is one driving force that does not …

The Regulatory Challenge Of Public Corruption, Lauren M. Ouziel

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

No abstract provided.

The Gdpr’S Version Of Algorithmic Accountability, Margot Kaminski

Publications

No abstract provided.

Fintech's Double Edges, Christopher G. Bradley

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The pace of change in financial technologies has quickened due to the rapid advances in technology from the late 1990s through today, exemplified by the advance of handheld devices and applications and the pervasiveness of the Internet in every facet of commerce. New financial technologies--commonly identified by the portmanteau "FinTech" or "fmtech"--have already reshaped many commercial practices that affect businesses and consumers, and they are likely to change many more.

The increasing availability and sophistication of FinTech offers both promises and perils. Artificial intelligence-driven algorithms purport to improve access to credit on "objective" criteria but may sometimes reinforce longstanding discriminatory …

Gender, Race & The Inadequate Regulation Of Cosmetics, Marie C. Boyd

Faculty Publications

Scholars and other commentators have identified failures in the regulation of cosmetics-which depends heavily on voluntary industry self- regulation-and called for more stringent regulation of these products. Yet these calls have largely neglected an important dimension of the problem: the current laissez-faire approach to the regulation of cosmetics disproportionally places women, and particularly women who are members of other excluded groups, at risk. This Article examines federal cosmetics law and regulation through a feminist lens. It argues that cosmetics law and regulation have lagged behind that of the other major product categories regulated by the Food and Drug Administration under …

Hands On The Wheel: A Call For Greater Regulation Of Semi-Autonomous Cars, Tracy Hresko Pearl

Faculty Articles

The United States is in the midst of a driverless car revolution. Semi-autonomous cars — those that can steer, accelerate, and brake on their own under certain circumstances — are already available to consumers. Fully autonomous cars will be available within the decade. The federal government and states throughout the nation have responded to these developments by rushing to pass laws designed to regulate the fully autonomous cars that are coming while largely ignoring the semi-autonomous cars that are already on U.S. roads. This is an extremely troubling oversight. New studies suggest that semi-autonomous vehicles are likely far more dangerous …

Mind The Gap: Supreme Court Contraction Of Legal Discretion For The Executive Branch, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

The Supreme Court, for the first time, elevated economic calculation to function as the fulcrum leveraging and allocating law-making power between the branches of government.

The federal agency regulation before the Supreme Court was estimated by the agency to impose approximately $9.6 billion in costs annually on the U.S. economy, to realize direct public benefits of $4-5 million annually. This is approximately a 2,000:1 negative cost/direct benefit ratio, before counting indirect ‘co-benefits.’ There is now new pressure to “change the math” by which the agency performs the now-required cost consideration. Incidental ‘co-benefits,’ if allowed to be considered, change the result. …

The Case For Investor Ordering, Scott Hirst

Faculty Scholarship

Whether corporate arrangements should be mandated by public law or “privately ordered” by corporations themselves has been a foundational question in corporate law scholarship. State corporation laws are generally privately ordered. But a significant and growing number of arrangements are governed by “corporate regulations” created by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). SEC corporate regulations are invariably mandatory. Whether they should be is the focus of this Article.
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/="/">This Article contributes to the ongoing debate by showing that whether mandatory or privately-ordered rules are optimal depends on the nature of investors, and their incentives in choosing corporate …

The New Health Care Federalism On The Ground, Abbe R. Gluck, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, part of a symposium investigating methods of empirically evaluating health policy, focuses on American health care federalism, the relationship between the federal and state governments in the realm of health care policy and regulation. We describe the results of a five year study of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) from 2012-2017. Our study focused on two key pillars of the ACA, which happen to be its most state-centered — expansion of Medicaid and the implementation of health insurance exchanges — and sheds light on federalism in the modern era of nationally-enacted health …

Corporate Cybersecurity: The International Threat To Private Networks And How Regulations Can Mitigate It, Eric J. Hyla

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Cyberattacks are occurring at an accelerating pace. Foreign nations are increasingly utilizing hacking as a tool for economic gain, acts of aggression, or international political expression. At risk are US consumers'personal data, private firms' bottom line, and the economies'integrity. In response, federal and state lawmakers have issued a series of disparate, uncoordinated policies seeking to strengthen cybersecurity practices. However, recent events indicate that these policies are less than ideal. This Note suggests that a unified response to cybersecurity is required and calls for the establishment of a single, central federal agency with authority over all cybersecurity regulations. Such an agency …

Lessons From Case Study Of Secured Transactions With Bitcoin, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

There has been some discussion about the flaws in using secured transactions law, Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.), to govern commercial transactions involving Bitcoins as collateral. Flaws necessitate the urgency of immediately fixing of the existing law. In the case of Bitcoins there is still much to learn about the marketplace for secured transactions with Bitcoins as collateral. The rapid change in technology, the speed of new ideas proposed, the constant announcements of adoption and adaptation of smart contracts in transactions, the volatility in cryptocurrency value, the endless reports of scams, and the rise of dark pools …

Federalism Hedging, Entrenchment, And The Climate Challenge, William W. Buzbee

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The virtues and effects of federalism continue to generate political, judicial and scholarly ferment. While some federalism partisans champion exclusivity and separation, others praise the more common political choice to retain federal and state regulatory overlap and interaction. Much of this work, however, focuses on government learning or rule clarity, giving little or no attention to how different federalism choices can heighten or hedge risks of regulatory failure and policy reversal. These debates play out with unusual fervor and with high stakes in battles over climate change regulation. Despite broad agreement that any effective climate policy intervention must include national …