Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Fireside Chat | Shawn Kodes ’07: Asset-Backed Finance: A Guide For Future Lawyers, Ronald H. Filler Institute For Financial Services Law

Ronald H. Filler Institute for Financial Services Law

April 21, 2026

Fiscal And Foreign Relations Dimensions Of Financial Stability Regulation, Ilya Beylin

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Crossed Wires: How Current Federal Laws And Regulations Are Inadequate At Protecting Consumers From Sophisticated Wire Fraud Schemes, Emily Brafman

University of Miami Business Law Review

The shift to digital banking has redefined the financial services industry, allowing consumers to conduct everyday transactions, such as wire transfers, at the touch of a button. However, this convenience comes at a steep price: as digital banking becomes the norm, consumers are increasingly exploited by sophisticated cybercriminals, enabled by a legal system that is ill-equipped to handle modern phishing and wire fraud schemes, ultimately draining consumer accounts. Unfortunately, existing protective measures, such as the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), have proven to be outdated and inadequate to address the unique risks posed by …

Resolving Bankruptcy's Non-Voting Impaired Class Issue Using The Nonfactor Solution, Jacob Harrington

Texas A&M Law Review

In chapter 11 bankruptcy voting procedures, the issue of non-voting impaired classes can be a complicated issue, but the Southern District of Texas’s new “nonfactor” approach can be used as a lens through which different solutions to this issue may be understood. The United States Bankruptcy Code states that a bankruptcy plan may only be confirmed if every impaired class votes to accept the plan. But despite the statute’s apparent clarity, different jurisdictions’ solutions vary, some deeming non-voting impaired classes to plan. This Note demystifies the Bankruptcy Code’s approach to this matter, examines the different jurisdictional approaches to this issue, …

Article Iii's Constraints On The Legislative Power, Elizabeth Beske

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Article III’s heightened concreteness standard for statutory harms takes federal judges deep into legislative terrain, jeopardizing statutory damage provisions and confining Congress to post hoc solutions rather than preemptive strikes. The Supreme Court has insisted that creating a cause of action is a legislative function. At the same time, its recent standing cases instruct lower federal courts to permit suit on statutory injuries only when they find actual harm that bears a tight connection to injuries recognized at common law. This new harm requirement rests uneasily with countless statutes featuring statutory damage provisions that are in place precisely because damages …

Fireside Chat | Victor Suthammanont '05: Financial Services Law 101, Ronald H. Filler Institute For Financial Services Law

Ronald H. Filler Institute for Financial Services Law

April 1, 2026

The Offshore Origins Of Regulatory Arbitrage, Ian J. Murray

William & Mary Business Law Review

Especially since the 2007–08 financial crisis, commentators have seized on the term “regulatory arbitrage” to describe a sprawling range of strategic compliance behavior spanning diverse sectors of the contemporary economy. Despite the term’s prevalence, there is scant agreement on the scope of activities it describes. To some, it has become a catch-all for legal avoidance from time immemorial. Such an expansive understanding obscures the context that led the term to acquire salience and fosters a fatalist view that all regulation is futile. Resisting this trend, this Article answers calls to situate regulatory arbitrage in a richer socio-historical context. Tracing the …

Tokenized Real Estate: The Law And Tech Of Digital Deeds, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of blockchain technology has generated bold claims that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can fundamentally transform real estate. Proponents assert that digital assets can tokenize real property interests: the concept of using digital tokens to represent ownership rights in physical property. Their goal is to allow buyers and sellers to transfer real estate through simple blockchain transactions, thereby eliminating traditional intermediaries, reducing costs, and accelerating deal velocity. This Essay provides the first comprehensive legal analysis examining whether American law actually supports such a direct tokenization of real estate rights.

Our investigation reveals a stark disconnect between technological capability and legal …

Zombie Litigation: Claim Aggregation, Litigant Autonomy And Funders' Intermeddling, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

The main debate surrounding litigation funding in recent years has focused on the question of disclosure of funding agreements.  While the issue is important, predominantly because of its effects on the course and outcome of individual cases, far more important are bigger, interrelated questions that have systemic effects on the civil justice system, the legal profession, and the nature of the attorney-client relationship.  The rise of litigation funding has had profound effects.  The subsequent rise of portfolio funding—which I here propose to  view as a new form of undisclosed and unregulated claim  aggregation—has broader-still effects including clients’ potential, and at …

Selective Flexibility: The Hidden Evolution Of Startup Corporate Law, Alvaro Pereira

Cardozo Law Review

This Article challenges the longstanding assumption that corporate law is largely irrelevant to non-listed companies and venture capital ( “VC”). Through a novel cross-country legal index covering twenty years and twelve jurisdictions, this Article shows that corporate laws have evolved through a process of “selective flexibility,” where certain legal barriers to VC deals are lifted, while others are stealthily preserved. For example, numerous reforms have enabled multiple-vote shares, but few have authorized the customization of board powers, limiting the universe of founder-investor agreements—and, ultimately, the development of startup ecosystems and VC markets.

Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of billion -dollar …

Is It Credit?, Jim Hawkins

William & Mary Law Review

Earned wage access companies advance money to workers based on wages they have already earned but have not yet been paid. Then, one of three things happens to reimburse the earned wage access provider: (1) the worker’s employer sends the provider money directly, (2) the provider withdraws money from the worker’s bank account on payday, or (3) nothing. The last of these is the most interesting. If the earned wage access provider does not receive the funds from the worker’s employer or bank account, the worker just walks away. Even more remarkable, many providers do not charge any mandatory fees …

Hyperbole In The Capital Stack: Are We Misreading Lender Intent? Liability Management Transactions And The Implied Covenant Of Good Faith And Fair Dealing, Daniel R. Janel

Cardozo Law Review

The hasty characterization and overall sentiment surrounding Liability Management Transactions (“LMTs”) as “hostile” strategies that promote “lender-on-lender violence” attempt to misapply the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing under New York law, which serves as a gap-filler rather than a “contract buster.” Although the covenant’s proper function is to protect parties’ reasonable expectations that they will receive the fruits of their bargain, it does not purport to rewrite or impose on carefully negotiated credit agreements. Sophisticated parties enter into meticulously crafted credit agreements with full awareness of the breadth and scope of their provisions. Only after finding themselves …

The Bankruptcy Revolving Door, Belisa Pang

Articles

The American consumer bankruptcy system is a costly regime with profound societal implications. Between 2008 and 2023, consumers filed 13.8 million bankruptcy cases across the ninety-four federal bankruptcy districts in the United States, generating over $4 billion in court filing fees alone. When accounting for attorney fees, trustee expenses, creditor costs, and broader economic externalities—such as increased interest rates borne by other consumers—the total financial impact easily reaches tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, of dollars.

Against that backdrop, this study uncovers a startling phenomenon: nearly 46% of the consumers who filed bankruptcy in 2023 were repeat filers, …

"Tuah Much To Handle": Why The Current Oversight On Cryptocurrency Is Insufficient, Adam Gross

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cbdcs Vs Decentralized Currencies: Considerations For 21st Century Global Financial Challenges, Andrew Michael Sobhy, Shuai Wang

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

As digital currencies gain prominence in everyday life, policymakers in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels debate the potential for innovation, surveillance, global relations, and a plethora of areas that concern citizens. While existing literature highlights the opportunities and pitfalls within this new digital age, including inclusivity and challenges to traditional banking, this study aims to contribute a quantitative approach to the discussion utilizing Federal Reserve data, studies from financial institutions, and various credible resources that hold a stake. Specifically, comparing novel Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs) and Decentralized Financial Currencies (DeFi) will provide a foundation …

Enforcing The Community Reinvestment Act, Jeremy C. Kress, Jeffery Y. Zhang

Law & Economics Working Papers

Nearly fifty years after the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) required banks to serve low- and moderate-income (LMI) areas, the systematic exclusion of disadvantaged communities from the mainstream financial system persists. This Article identifies a novel explanation for the CRA's limited impact: its enforcement mechanisms are ineffective.The CRA operates through two enforcement channels. Regulators must (1) consider a bank's CRA record when the bank seeks permission to merge or expand, and (2) publish periodic assessments of each bank's CRA performance. Using twenty years of CRA data, we show that neither enforcement mechanism works as intended. Banks strategically increase CRA …

Does Article I Of The Constitution Prohibit The States From Creating Their Own Cryptocurrencies?, Kevin Fontenot

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The market for cryptocurrency (crypto) has exploded in size since the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was created in 2009. As of September 4, 2024, the value of all existing cryptocurrency was $2.02 trillion. On November 14, 2024, this value reached a high of $3.2 trillion, apparently in response to the election of pro-crypto President Donald Trump. Despite the fact that cryptocurrencies have been at the forefront of many high profile scandals, consumers still flock to them. For example, celebrities including Hailey Welch (colloquially known as “Hawk Tuah girl”), Logan Paul, and Jason Derulo have been criticized for allegedly goading consumers into …

Bankrupt Crypto Organizations, Kara Bruce, Christopher K. Odinet, Andrea Tosato

Faculty Scholarship

This Article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intersection between decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and American bankruptcy law. DAOs are blockchain-based entities that enable individuals to pursue common goals using decentralized decision-making and automated governance. Since their recent emergence, DAOs have proliferated dramatically—with over 20,000 organizations managing over $20 billion in assets and engaging in activities ranging from investment management to real estate and even attempting to purchase historic copies of the U.S. Constitution. Yet like any other organization, DAOs can fail, creating an urgent need to understand what happens when unstoppable code meets immovable bankruptcy law.

Our investigation …

Recommendations For Developing A Regulatory Sandbox And A Comprehensive Legal Framework For Fintech In Vietnam - Part Ii, Sue M. Altmeyer, Phan Dang Hai

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Fintech, a product of the 4.0 revolution, has experienced rapid growth in Vietnam, attracting significant attention from investors and government agencies. In encouraging innovation, the authors write, the need for a practical legal framework to regulate fintech activities has become a critical issue. The authors believe that this new legal framework should include a regulatory sandbox, which would allow fintech startups to test their products in a controlled environment, helping to mitigate risks, foster creativity, and enhance regulatory oversight. This two-part article discusses challenges in creating and implementing a regulatory sandbox and provides recommendations for overcoming these hurdles. The first …

Unlocking The Corporate Governance Potential Of Mutual Fund Investors, Jeffrey Manns

Nevada Law Journal

America’s mutual fund governance has long consisted of a system of money manager dominance and shareholder impotence. While mutual funds pool together unprecedented sums of capital, investors historically have had no meaningful role in governance and have faced a choice of “love it or leave it” when it comes to their investments in mutual funds.

The controversy over mutual fund managers’ advocacy of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles in portfolio companies has reinvigorated interest in repairing the dysfunctional principal-agent relationship between investors and money managers. The management of BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, ignited an ESG voting controversy …