Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Pay Transparency Laws Clear As Mud: A Discussion Of And Proposal For The Pay Transparency Legislation In Colorado And New York, Emily Hall

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that while pay transparency laws in Colorado and New York represent progress, they fall short of achieving true pay equity because they do not require employers to disclose the factors influencing salary ranges. The author advocates for amendments to these laws, including mandatory annual pay audits and the disclosure of factors and their weights used in determining salary ranges, to enhance transparency and fairness in negotiations.

Debt Tokens, Andrea Tosato, Diane Lourdes Dick, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

The worlds of crypto and bankruptcy have collided. Once-prominent, fast-growing, and even politically influential platforms for trading cryptocurrencies have imploded spectacularly. Gone are the glossy advertisements, celebrity endorsements, and proclamations that blockchain operates as a law unto itself. Instead, insolvent crypto businesses—including the crypto exchange giant FTX—find themselves in bankruptcy court, no different from any other failed enterprise. These bankruptcies reveal a startling reality: individual investors who placed their trust in these platforms have been stripped of their digital assets. In their stead, they hold hard-to-collect claims against these defunct platforms.

Amid the chill of the crypto winter, bankruptcy has …

Legal Market Decartelization, Milan Markovic, Nuno Garoupa

Faculty Scholarship

American lawyers’ grip on the legal market is receding. Scholars and policymakers increasingly agree that the public has little to lose and potentially much to gain from legal market decartelization - the weakening of the lawyers’ monopoly over the legal services market. Harkening to deregulatory initiatives abroad and in Arizona and Utah, reformers contend that removing restrictions on the corporate delivery of legal services and unauthorized practice of law will slash costs and expand access to justice.

Drawing on economic theory and recent market developments, this Article offers a cautionary rejoinder. Understandable concerns about cartelization and lawyer rent-seeking have led …

Property Rights In Digital Assets Under Uniform State Laws In The United States, Benjamin Geva

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: The Movement To Protect Kids From Addictive Technologies, Gaia Bernstein

Seattle University Law Review

In this keynote address, I describe my personal journey starting with a school outreach program I created in 2017 to address technology overuse among kids. While I initially advocated for self-help methods, I grew to recognize that the tech industry bore responsibility. This realization led me to write Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, which focused on collective action to pressure the tech industry to redesign its addictive products.

I then describe the movement to control addictive technologies and protect kids, which has gained momentum since the end of the pandemic. This movement combines grassroots parent activism with legal-political action. …

Moral Panic Or Public Health Crisis? Lessons From Drugs And Gambling For “Addictive” Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, Haomin (Kevin) Yan

Seattle University Law Review

Alcohol, automobiles, guns, lottery, loot boxes, meat, music, opioid painkillers, processed foods, prop bets, slot machines, television, tobacco, violent video games. Over the last century each of these has been subject to concerns—some might even say “moral panics”—from parents and policymakers about avoidable harms to kids and adults. In some cases we look back with the benefit of hindsight and dismiss those concerns as naïve or moralistic. In others we look back at them as justified or as having come too late to check an expanding industry before it did unfathomable harm while growing so powerful that it became all …

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

How Active Cftc Enforcement Could Benefit Crypto, Carol R. Goforth

Pace Law Review

Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) crypto enforcement rose to record levels in 2023, prompting applause from some observers and criticism from others. In fact, the CFTC’s enforcement agenda is not out of step with other federal agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has also been incredibly active in the crypto industry. It might seem that this is bad news for crypto, given that both the CFTC and SEC have been angling to become the primary regulator for these new assets. In reality, proof that the CFTC is active in enforcing the law against crypto entrepreneurs and …

Adopting Permissioned Blockchain Models To Enhance Consumer Protection And Comply With Consumer Protection Laws, Erika Buenrostro

Featured Student Work

Blockchain technology enables decentralized, peer-to-peer transactions and data management, offering transparency while raising data privacy and consumer protection concerns. As the current administration promotes blockchain adoption, including cryptocurrency, more users and businesses will likely integrate the technology. This thesis provides a framework to help businesses adopt blockchain while ensuring compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). To prevent data mishandling and legal penalties, consumers and businesses must stay informed about the risks and evolving state privacy laws.

A CCPA-compliant approach retains blockchain’s benefits through a permissioned model, storing only non-personal (neutral) data on-chain while keeping personal information off-chain in …

Efta Coverage Of Modern Consumer Wire Transfers: Consumer Financial Regulation In The Wake Of Loper Bright, Benjamin Gygi

Fordham Law Review

The rise of online banking has led to a proliferation of consumer fraud. Schemes aimed at stealing consumer funds using wire transfers executed through online banking portals have proven particularly devastating to consumers because of a perceived loophole in the Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA) that leaves consumers with full liability for funds stolen through wire transfers. Consumer advocacy groups, and most notably the New York Attorney General, have recently argued that this loophole does not really exist; they claim that the EFTA’s text conclusively covers certain parts of modern wire transfer processes initiated through online banking portals. Considering the …

Shadow Banking And Securities Law, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Jeffery Yufeng Zhang

Articles

Shadow banking may be the single greatest challenge facing financial regulation. Financial institutions that function like banks, but fall outside the scope of banking regulation—aptly termed “shadow banks”—were at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis and most episodes of serious financial stress since then. Scholars have largely focused on one response to this problem: extending traditional banking regulation to shadow banks. Yet more than fifteen years after the crisis, major regulatory efforts along this route have stalled.

In this Article, we explore the uneasy case for greater regulation of shadow banking through a different route—securities law. Our first contribution …

Central Clearing The U.S. Treasury Market, Yadav Yesha, Joshua Younger

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In October 1956, the famed U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright revealed a radical and ambitious new project. The Illinois would be a mile high, four times the height of the Empire State Building (at that point still the tallest building in the world). Key to this vision was a type of foundation known as the taproot, which offered a means by which to secure such a towering edifice while still enabling architectural creativity-or, as Wright put it, to "make rigidity possible at [ ] extreme heights." A similar design had previously protected another Wright design, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, …

Central Clearing The U.S. Treasury Market, Yesha Yadav

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Essay considers this regulatory response. It focuses on the introduction of mandatory central clearing for most trades in U.S. Treasuries-a proposal seeking to significantly reshape the day-to-day functioning of the Treasury market.10 Central clearing is a well-established means by which to reduce the risk of loss associated when trading parties default. It does so by providing a well-resourced and informed central counterparty (CCP) to step into and stand behind trades. CCPs help promote stability by reducing the probability of, and potential losses associated with, the default of a trading counterparty. But they also impose certain costs on market participants …

Regionalism And The Federal Reserve Banks, Kathryn Judge, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

Regionalism is central to our country’s central banking system. Rather than rely on a single organization to set monetary policy and oversee banks, Congress created a multiplicity of bodies including twelve Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs), each designed to operate in a different part of the country. These FRBs are an early and undertheorized example of how the federal government uses regional bodies to formulate and administer federal policy. When they were first authorized in 1913, their regional character assuaged concerns about centralizing power over the economy. Today, the FRBs continue to play a number of important roles, helping to shape …

Shadow Banking And Securities Law, Gabriel Rauterberg, Jeffery Y. Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Shadow banking may be the single greatest challenge facing financial regulation. Financial institutions that function like banks, but fall outside the scope of banking regulation — aptly termed “shadow banks” — were at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis and most episodes of serious financial stress since then. Scholars have largely focused on one response to this problem: extending traditional banking regulation to shadow banks. Yet more than fifteen years after the crisis, major regulatory efforts along this route have stalled.

In this Article, we explore the uneasy case for greater regulation of shadow banking through a different route …