Law Commons^™

Uncertain Futures In Evolving Financial Markets, Anita Krug

All Faculty Scholarship

Today’s publicly offered investment funds, including mutual funds, have ever more diverse investment strategies, as they increasingly invest in financial instruments that, in earlier years, had been the province of only the most sophisticated investors. Although the new landscape of investment possibilities may substantially benefit retail investors, one financial instrument attracting increasing amounts of retail investors’ assets is acutely troublesome: the commodity futures contract. Futures originated as a means for farmers and other producers of agricultural commodities to ensure that their products could be sold at reasonable prices. Early on, the goals of futures regulation centered on one particular risk …

Recent Developments: Are Land Contracts Preying On Low-Income Buyers Or Do They Offer A Different Avenue For Home Ownership?, Christopher Barron

University of Baltimore Journal of Land and Development

As of May 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has announced an investigation into the practice of land contracts and compliance with federal truth and lending laws. The CFPB’s investigation is in response to the increasing number of reports from organizations, such as the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), condemning land contracts for their predatory nature and disparate impact on low-income buyers, specifically those of color. Furthermore, land contracts have been labeled as “Wall Street’s Toxic Transactions” because of large wall street investment groups utilizing them for their own capital gain. Land contracts have been vilified for luring unsuspecting …

Voluntary Disclosure Fostering Overenforcement And Overcriminalization Of The Fcpa, Karen E. Woody

Scholarly Articles

Professor Peter Reilly’s article, Incentivizing Corporate America to Eradicate Transnational Bribery Worldwide: Federal Transparency and Voluntary Disclosure Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, 67 Fla. L. Rev. 1683 (2015), challenges the notion that voluntary disclosure of potential Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations to the government is always the best course of action for a company. In a world where whistleblowers can receive a bounty for information provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),2 self-reporting is a critical, high-pressure decision that each company must undertake when faced with potential FCPA liability.

This Article takes a broader look at …

Discovering The Knowledge Monopoly Of Law Librarianship Under The Dikw Pyramid, Xiaomeng Zhang

Law Librarian Scholarship

Historical debates demonstrated that knowledge monopoly is a key to a profession. This article explores the exclusive knowledge base of the law librarianship profession through the lens of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) paradigm.

Hurrah For The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Consumer Arbitration As A Poster Child For Regulation, Jean R. Sternlight

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Use Of Facial Recognition Technology For Medical Purposes: Balancing Privacy With Innovation, Seema Mohapatra

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When It Comes To Lawyers, Is An Ounce Of Prevention Worth A Pound Of Cure, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This 3-page blog post addresses the topic of proactive lawyer regulation, which is also known as proactive management-based regulation or PMBR. This blog post reviews Professor Susan Fortney's article entitled "Promoting Public Protection through an “Attorney Integrity” System: Lessons from the Australian Experience with Proactive Regulation System," and summarizes some of the impressive data that Professor Fortney collected in Australia, including her finding that sixty-two percent of the respondents reported that they agreed or strongly agreed with the following statement: the self-assessment process ‘was a learning exercise that enabled our firm to improve client service.’” The article also reports that …

Agencies And Science-Experiment Risk, Eric E. Johnson

Faculty Articles

There is a curious absence of legal constraints on U.S. govern­ment agencies undertaking potentially risky scientific research. Some of these activities may present a risk of killing millions or even destroying the planet. Current law leaves it to agencies to decide for themselves whether their activities fall within the bounds of acceptable risk. This Article explores to what extent and under what circumstances the law ought to allow private actions against such non­ regulatory agency endeavors. Engaging with this issue is not only interesting in its own right, it allows us to test fundamental concepts of agency competence and the …

Regulating Software When Everything Has Software, Paul Ohm, Blake Reid

Publications

This Article identifies a profound, ongoing shift in the modern administrative state: from the regulation of things to the regulation of code. This shift has and will continue to place previously isolated agencies in an increasing state of overlap, raising the likelihood of inconsistent regulations and putting seemingly disparate policy goals, like privacy, safety, environmental protection, and copyright enforcement, in tension. This Article explores this problem through a series of case studies and articulates a taxonomy of code regulations to help place hardware-turned-code rules in context. The Article considers the likely turf wars, regulatory thickets, and related dynamics that are …

People Analytics And The Regulation Of Information Under The Fair Credit Reporting Act, Pauline T. Kim, Erika Hanson

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Teaching A Course On Regulation Of Police Investigation—A Multi-Perspective, Problem-Oriented Course, Christopher Slobogin

Saint Louis University Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Reregulation And The Regulatory Timeline, Peter Molk, Arden Rowell

UF Law Faculty Publications

Regulation is often casually conceived of as functioning like a binary on/off switch: as if an area, issue, or industry is either regulated or not. While this binary model of regulation can be useful, it also decontextualizes regulatory decisions from their position in time, and thus obscures important ways in which regulators are constrained and incentivized by past and future decisions. As an alternative, we present a timeline approach to regulation. The timeline approach is particularly helpful in illustrating the ways that earlier regulatory decisions create vestigial effects for later related decisions, and for highlighting the informational advantage that later …

Danger And Dignity: Immigrant Day Laborers And Occupational Risk, Jayesh Rathod

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The plight of immigrant workers in the United States has captured significant scholarly attention in recent years. Despite the prevalence of discourses regarding this population, one set of issues has received relatively little attention: immigrant workers’ exposure to unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, and their corresponding susceptibility to workplace injuries and illnesses. Researchers have consistently found that immigrant workers suffer disproportionately from occupational injuries and fatalities, even when controlling for industry and occupation. Why, then, are foreign-born workers at greater risk for workplace injuries and fatalities, when compared with their native-born counterparts? This Article seeks to develop answers to that …

The Power Of Lawyer Regulators To Increase Client & Public Protection Through Adoption Of A Proactive Regulation System, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This Article focuses on those who regulate U.S. laywers. The Article argues that the lawyers who head regulatory bodies in the United States have the ability to adjust the focus of the regulator for which they work in a way that will increase client and public protection. The Article further argues that it is appropriate for lawyers in these positions to exercise this power and that they should do so. The Article concludes by offering two concrete recommendations.

The first recommendation is that those who are in charge should, upon reflection, adopt a mindset in which they recognize that the …

A Single Call: The Need To Amend The Parent-Subsidiary Relationship Under The Ftaia In View Of Motorola Mobility, Catherine E. Cognetti

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

In Motorola Mobility, LLC v. AU Optronics Corporation, the Seventh Circuit dismissed Motorola’s Sherman Act claims under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvement Act. In doing so, they held that Motorola’s American parent corporation was a separate entity from their foreign subsidiaries, and thus barred from bringing suit under the indirect purchaser doctrine. The effect of the Seventh Circuit’s decision precluded injured purchasers from recovering damages under the Sherman Act—Motorola’s subsidiaries could not sue because their injuries occurred abroad, while Motorola could not sue because it did not make direct purchases from the antitrust violators.

Courts have often considered a parent …

Need For Informed Consent In The Age Of Ubiquitous Human Testing, Caitlyn Kuhs

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Fantasy Becomes Reality: Attempts To Regulate The Highly Unregulated Daily Fantasy Sports Industry., Garrett Greene

St. Mary's Law Journal

Legislation is beginning to creep into the once safeguard-devoid sphere of the daily fantasy sports industry. Daily fantasy sports are a subset of traditional season-long fantasy sports and are immensely lucrative, yet there are hardly any standard regulations. Ironically, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) of 2006, which was used to outlaw online poker gambling, paved the way for daily fantasy sports, because it federally exempted fantasy sports from being classified as illegal sports gambling. The UIGEA further protects daily fantasy sports from the Professional and Amateur Sports Prohibition Act (PASPA) of 1992 which prohibits states from sponsoring sports …

Trademark Laundering, Useless Patents, And Other Ip Challenges For The Marijuana Industry, Sam Kamin, Viva R. Moffat University Of Denver College Of Law

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Neo-Liberal Turn In Environmental Regulation, Jason J. Czarnezki

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Regulation has taken a neoliberal turn, using market-based mechanisms to achieve social benefits, especially in the context of environmental protection, and promoting information dissemination, labeling, and advertising to influence consumer preferences. Although this turn to neoliberal environmental regulation is well under way, there have been few attempts to manage this new reality. Instead, most commentators simply applaud or criticize the turn. If relying on neoliberal environmental reform (i.e., facing this reality regardless of one’s view of this turn), regulation and checks on these reforms are required. This Article argues that in light of the shift from traditional to neoliberal “substantive” …

A Story Of Three Bank-Regulatory Legal Systems: Contract, Financial Management Regulation, And Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

How should banks be regulated to avoid their failure? Banks must control the risks they take with depositors' money. If depositors lose their trust in their banks, and demand their money, the banks will fail. This article describes three legal bank regulatory systems: Contract with depositors (U.S.); a mix of contract and trust law, but going towards trust (Japan), and a full trust-fiduciary law regulating banks (Israel). The article concludes that bank regulation, which limits the banks' risks and conflicts of interest, helps create trustworthy banks that serve their country best.

Fda's Troubling Failures To Use Its Authority To Regulate Genetically Modified Foods, Leslie Francis, Robin Kundis Craig, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This Article concerns the particular regulatory responsibilities only of FDA. It sets to one side the possible regulatory authority of agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") or the U.S. Department of Agriculture ("USDA"). This approach risks replicating the regulatory fracture introduced during the Reagan Administration and criticized by some scholars,¹⁵ but there is a great deal to say about current FDA practices. Out of similar considerations of space and focus, this Article also sets to one side many other important issues that surround GM foods: intellectual property rights; rights to free speech or commercial speech; fair trade …

Pluralizing The 'Sharing' Economy, Erez Aloni

All Faculty Publications

The so-called sharing economy presents one of the most important and controversial regulatory dilemmas of our time — yet, surprisingly, it remains undertheorized. This Article supplies needed analysis. Specifically, the Article offers a regulatory model that distinguishes between two separate kinds of transactions: conventional economic transactions and those that rely on temporary access to goods and services that would otherwise go underutilized (what I call “access-to-excess” transactions). The regulatory regime that this Article proposes would distinguish between true access-to-excess transactions and conventional transactions. The model is rooted in a version of pluralist theory that posits that the state is responsible …

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 …

The Challenge Of Fiduciary Regulation: The Investment Advisors Act After Seventy-Five Years, Roberta S. Karmel

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Seventy-five years after its enactment the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 has advanced from a relatively weak statute merely registering advisers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to a more robust law imposing fiduciary responsibilities on advisers. Over the years, the number of investment advisers and the number of their clients have increased greatly. The SEC therefore has been pressured by Congress to develop a harmonized fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and advisers and also to develop and enforce a greater degree of oversight over the advisory industry. These developments have raised the questions of how to fund such efforts …

Memorandum Re: Health Canada's 'Draft Guidance' On Section 21.1(3)(C) Of The Food And Drugs Act, Matthew Herder, Trudo Lemmens

Reports & Public Policy Documents

In 2014 Parliament enacted a number of amendments to the Food and Drugs Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. F-27 [hereinafter the “F&D Act”]. Known as “Vanessa’s Law,” these amendments were intended to enhance the regulation of pharmaceutical drugs and thereby protect Canadians from harm by giving the regulator, Health Canada, new powers to, inter alia, recall drugs, require active post-market surveillance, and improve the transparency of information around pharmaceutical drugs. Vanessa’s Law explicitly recognized that “new measures are required to further protect Canadians from the risks related to drugs and medical devices.” (emphasis added) (Bill C-17, An Act to Amend the …

Putting Public Law Into “Private” Sport, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

Across all levels of sport—professional, Olympic, intercollegiate, interscholastic, and youth recreational—the prevailing view is that the government should not take an active role in regulating athletics. As a result, there are relatively few federal or state statutes directed at regulating sports, and those that are aimed at sports primarily serve to support the professional sports industry. Moreover, courts show great deference to sports leagues and administrators, most often applying law in a way that insulates and empowers them. This creates a climate where leagues and administrators are permitted wide latitude to structure and conduct their respective sports as they see …

Access To Capital Or Just More Blues? Issuer Decision-Making Post Sec Crowdfunding Regulation, Patricia Hureston Lee

All Faculty Scholarship

Crowdfunding is an alternative for Issuers seeking funds for their businesses. On October 2015, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) released final crowdfunding regulations that became effective May 20162 as a charge of the Jobs Act, Title III (the “Crowdfund Act”). Issuers can now secure crowdfunded investments without a securities registration.

This article evaluates investment-based crowdfunding from the perspective of one group that has been neglected from the crowdfunding scholarship — Issuers that seek financing under this new framework. In Section I, the author summarizes the new crowdfund regulations, which create a new financing opportunity vastly different from previous types of …

Sharing And The City, Michele Finck, Sofia Ranchordas

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The sharing of public infrastructure, the exchange of small services, and the traditional "cup of sugar borrowed from the neighbor" are practices intrinsic to most urban agglomerations. In the digital age, these sharing initiatives are facilitated by online platforms such as Feastly, Peerby, and HomeExchange. These platforms allow city residents to share the idle capacity of some of their assets (e.g., clothing, tools, or a spare bedroom) with other residents living in close proximity to them, or with tourists looking for accommodation. While these practices can be justified by efficiency and sustainability concerns, some of them appear to be in …

Up In The Cloud: Finding Common Ground In Providing For Law Enforcement Access To Data Held By Cloud Computing Service Providers, Matthew Mckenna

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Cloud computing is an everyday part of the modern world; a technology that is increasingly transcending international borders. Disregarding international borders allows cloud computing to operate more efficiently and thus provides better service to users. Yet, the global nature of cloud computing raises a question--what happens if multiple countries apply facially similar laws to cloud computing providers differently? This scenario is common, especially in the context of law enforcement seeking access to cloud computing data. The United States and the United Kingdom have similar laws regarding the government's ability to acquire users' data. Importantly, neither law explicitly addresses the question …

The Local Turn; Innovation And Diffusion In Civil Rights Law, Olatunde C.A. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

Is the future of civil rights subnational? If one is looking for civil rights innovation, much of this innovation might be happening through legislation, regulatory frameworks, and policies adopted by state and local governments. In recent years, states and cities have adopted legislation banning discrimination in housing based on the source of an individual's income, regulating the consideration of arrest or conviction in employment decisions, and prohibiting discrimination in employment based on an applicant's credit history.

This deployment of subnational power is not new to civil rights. Many of the laws and regulatory frameworks that are now core to the …