How To Improve Retail Investor Protection After The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act,
2010
University of Cincinnati College of Law
How To Improve Retail Investor Protection After The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform And Consumer Protection Act, Barbara Black
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act gives the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to address two issues especially important to retail investors. First, section 913 requires the SEC to conduct a six-month study on the effectiveness of existing standards of care for broker-dealers and investment advisers and specifically authorizes the SEC to establish a fiduciary duty for broker dealers. Second, section 921 grants the SEC authority to prohibit the use of predispute arbitration agreements that would require investors to arbitrate future disputes arising under the federal securities laws and regulations or the rules of a self-regulatory organization. …
Introduction: The Sec At 75,
2010
University of Cincinnati College of Law
Introduction: The Sec At 75, Barbara Black
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This Introduction begins with a brief look back at the creation of the SEC and then examines the present-day agency's expression of its mission. It next reviews the Blueprint's assessment of the agency and its proposal for reform and then turns to the Obama Administration's Financial Regulatory Reform and its proposals relating to the SEC. Finally, this Introduction describes five issues to which the panelists paid particular attention: the SEC's mission, competition among financial markets, the proposal to merge the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the role of financial market networks in systemic risk regulation, and the …
Sec Interpretive Guidance For Climate Related Disclosures,
2010
American University Washington College of Law
Sec Interpretive Guidance For Climate Related Disclosures, Nickolas M. Boecher
Sustainable Development Law & Policy
No abstract provided.
See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George
Seattle University Law Review
Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.
Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang
Seattle University Law Review
This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.
Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada,
2010
Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia
Securities Class Actions Move North: A Doctrinal And Empirical Analysis Of Securities Class Actions In Canada, A. C. Pritchard, Janis P. Sarra
All Faculty Publications
The article explores securities class actions involving Canadian issuers since the provinces added secondary market class action provisions to their securities legislation. It examines the development of civil liability provisions, and class proceedings legislation and their effect on one another. Through analyses of the substance and framework of the statutory provisions, the article presents an empirical and comparative examination of cases involving Canadian issuers in both Canada and the United States. In addition, it explores how both the availability and pricing of director and officer insurance have been affected by the potential for secondary market class action liability. The article …
How To Avoid The Constraints Of Rule 10b-5(B): A First Circuit Guide For Underwriters, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 931 (2010),
2010
UIC School of Law
How To Avoid The Constraints Of Rule 10b-5(B): A First Circuit Guide For Underwriters, 43 J. Marshall L. Rev. 931 (2010), Eric H. Franklin
UIC Law Review
No abstract provided.
Short Selling In A Financial Crisis: The Regulation Of Short Sales In The United Kingdom And The United States,
2010
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
Short Selling In A Financial Crisis: The Regulation Of Short Sales In The United Kingdom And The United States, Katherine Mcgavin
Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business
In a well-regulated market with minimal risk of abuse, the liquidity and information efficiency benefits of short selling far outweigh its potential harm. Contrary to the recent hostility short sellers face from market regulators and the popular press, short sellers in aggregate are neither market villains nor agents of destruction. While a small minority of short sellers have exploited lax regulation and inattentive enforcement of anti-abuse rules to manipulate stock prices and earn substantial fees, these rare episodes suggest that the world's major capital markets need better enforcement of existing rules and not new rules per se. The failure of …
The Case For Semi-Strong-Form Corporate Scienter In Securities Fraud Actions,
2010
King & Spalding
The Case For Semi-Strong-Form Corporate Scienter In Securities Fraud Actions, Paul B. Maslo
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
The mental state of scienter - intent to defraud - is a required element of a securities fraud claim. The scienter inquiry is fairly straightforward when the defendant is an individual. It is more complex when a corporate entity is involved because a corporation can only act through its agents; it has no mind of its own. This article compares the three approaches courts have used to impute scienter to corporate defendants in the securities fraud context and concludes by recommending the approach which strikes an appropriate balance between several dueling public policy concerns.
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”
Opening Remarks,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii
Seattle University Law Review
Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces
Seattle University Law Review
Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao
Seattle University Law Review
We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel
Seattle University Law Review
In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill
Seattle University Law Review
Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …
Berle And The Entrepreneur,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley
Seattle University Law Review
In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …
The Birth Of Corporate Governance,
2010
Seattle University School of Law
The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells
Seattle University Law Review
Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …
Too Big To Fail?: Recasting The Financial Safety Net,
2010
Duke Law School
Too Big To Fail?: Recasting The Financial Safety Net, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
Government safety nets in the United States and abroad focus, anachronistically, on problems of banks and other financial institutions, largely ignoring financial markets which have become major credit sources for consumers and companies. Besides failing to protect these markets, this narrow focus encourages morally hazardous behavior by large institutions, like AIG and Citigroup, that are "too big to fail." This paper examines how a safety net should be recast to protect financial markets and also explains why that safety net would mitigate moral hazard and help resolve the too-big-to-fail dilemma.
Voting Power Without Responsibility Or Risk: How Should Proxy Reform Address The Decoupling Of Economic And Voting Rights,
2010
Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law
Voting Power Without Responsibility Or Risk: How Should Proxy Reform Address The Decoupling Of Economic And Voting Rights, Roberta S. Karmel
Villanova Law Review (1956 - )
No abstract provided.
Federal Courts Not Federal Tribunals,
2010
University of Missouri - Kansas City, School of Law
Federal Courts Not Federal Tribunals, Lumen N. Mulligan
Faculty Works
The Court has employed inferred-cause-of-action doctrine to foster the rights of individuals, from injured workers to female college applicants to defrauded investors and targets of racial discrimination. Although the question of whether the federal courts ought to infer causes of action from federal statutes is an old chestnut in the federal-courts field, a new basis for barring such a practice has arisen, requiring fresh attention to the Court's inferred-cause-of-action doctrine. This new position asserts that inferring a cause of action is not merely poor judicial policy but extra-jurisdictional under either 28 U.S.C. - 1331 or Article III. Borrowing a phrase …
