Securities Law Commons^™

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

When Tokenized Real-World Assets Collide With Real World, Biying Cheng, David J. Reiss

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The city of Detroit filed a public nuisance lawsuit in July of last year in the Michigan Circuit Court for the Third Judicial Circuit against Real Token, its co-founders and 165 affiliated entities, alleging building code and safety violations across over 400 Detroit residential properties.[1] RealT is a blockchain real estate platform that sells fractional interests in individual U.S. rental properties through the issuance of crypto security tokens.

On July 22, the judge issued a temporary restraining order — later converted into a preliminary injunction on Nov. 4 — barring RealT from collecting rent, pursuing evictions without a certificate of …

Is Delaware Different? Stockholder Lawyering In The Court Of Chancery, Jessica Erickson, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers

Delaware corporate law relies on stockholder litigation to police corporate misconduct. Judges in turn use attorneys’ fees to shape the incentives of the lawyers who pursue this litigation. This system of corporate accountability has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, with a series of decisions causing several high-profile companies to leave Delaware and prompting lawmakers to call for reform. Yet little empirical evidence exists about how Delaware judges set the attorneys’ fee awards that sustain this enforcement system. Using a hand-collected dataset of stockholder suits filed in the Court of Chancery, this Article offers the most comprehensive empirical analysis …

Who Gets A Seat At The Table? Stakeholder Participation In Sec Rulemaking, Yuliya Guseva, Irena Hutton, Adam C. Pritchard, Joseph Grundfest

Law & Economics Working Papers

We study how public participation shapes financial regulation using a novel dataset of 453 SEC rules proposed between 1995 and 2024. We collect over 81,000 public comments and 5,600 meetings between regulators and stakeholders related to those rules. Using large language models, we identify participants and extract structured measures of comment content and tone. We document asymmetries in stakeholder participation: retail investors dominate comment volume with shorter submissions, while institutional actors engage primarily through detailed comments and meetings with the SEC officials. Input from sophisticated stakeholders is more likely to be incorporated into the final rule release and informs rule …

Fireside Chat | Ethan L. Silver ’02: The Evolving Landscape Of Crypto, Ronald H. Filler Institute For Financial Services Law

Ronald H. Filler Institute for Financial Services Law

February 10, 2026

Reliance, Misplaced: Restoring The Text Of The Antifraud Provisions Of The Federal Securities Laws In Sec Enforcement Actions, Christopher R. Mills

University of Miami Business Law Review

The antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws are statutory sledgehammers. Those who violate them can face severe sanctions, including ruinous monetary penalties and others that can effectively bar firms and individuals from the securities industries. The Securities and Exchange Commission is authorized to enforce these provisions with the full weight of the federal government. And the SEC does so vigorously.

Even though the antifraud provisions target fraud, for decades lower courts and the Commission have held that the Commission can establish violations of them without any evidence that anyone was misled. They have done so by concluding that, unlike …

Beyond The Genius Act: Regulatory Gaps And Operational Challenges In Stablecoin Adoption, David Krause

University of Miami Law Review

The enactment of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act in July 2025 represents a pivotal shift in the digital asset landscape, providing a federal framework for payment stablecoins and addressing critical issues of transparency and reserve backing. However, this Article argues that the GENIUS Act addresses only a subset of the systemic inefficiencies hindering the transition of stablecoins from speculative instruments to institutional-grade financial tools. Through an analysis of current market data and regulatory gaps, this Article identifies four persistent challenges: fragmented liquidity across geographic corridors, practical spendability constraints rooted in tax and accounting treatment, …

Reporting Materiality Under The Sec Cybersecurity Disclosure Rules: How Corporate Boards Balance Duty And Risk For Cyber Threats And Incidents, Deborah Slattery-Pereira

American University Business Law Review

The Security Exchange Commission’s (SEC) cybersecurity rules require that public companies disclose a material cyber threat or incident and the impact of the incident on the company’s business Corporate boards must disclose any cyber-related information that would affect a reasonable shareholder’s investment decisions. These rules delegate to the corporate board and management the decision of which cybersecurity events qualify as material to investors. Directors and officers must also decide when and how to disclose to the SEC, and what information to report.

The SEC Cybersecurity Rules increase compliance and litigation costs for public companies, as shareholders can use this information …

The Sec’S Acceleration Shift And The Privatization Of Section 11 Claims, Leonardo Lupiano

Student Scholarship

In September 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it would no longer consider issuer-investor arbitration provisions when deciding whether to accelerate the effectiveness of registration statements. Although framed as a small exercise of administrative restraint, this policy shift changes the conditions under which public offerings occur and may meaningfully affect how Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 is enforced. This Article examines the role acceleration has historically played as a practical constraint on arbitration clauses and analyzes how the Commission’s new neutrality reshapes the enforcement environment for Section 11 claims.

Liability For Non-Disclosure In Ipos, Albert H. Choi, Kathryn E. Spier

Articles

A privately-informed entrepreneur may withhold material information from prospective investors who may sue the firm ex post for (alleged) non-disclosure. Absent liability, the entrepreneur has an excessive incentive to withhold bad news and pursue socially-wasteful projects. Liability deters inefficient non- disclosure and prevents capital misallocation. Any damage award received by investors is partially offset by a reduction in equity value. Depending on the likelihood of court error and litigation cost, the socially-optimal damage award may be either zero or the minimum necessary for full deterrence. The private incentive to waive liability may be socially excessive or insufficient. Positive and normative …

Regulatory History And Judicial Review, Todd Phillips, Anthony L. Moffa

Faculty Publications

The Administrative Procedure Act requires federal agencies to simply "incorporate in the rules adopted a concise general statement of their basis and purpose" after they receive comments from the public, and the Supreme Court ruled in Overton Park that courts are to adjudicate whether rules are arbitrary and capricious based on agencies' contemporaneous rationales. Judge-created doctrines incentivize agencies to rely on these "concise" statements to elucidate their rationales, and as a result, rulemaking preambles have ballooned in size as agencies seek to insulate themselves from critical courts.

This article contends that although the APA's statutory requirement is in tension with …

Re-Examining U.S. Bailouts In The Digital Era: Moral Hazard And Adverse Consequences, Joel Slawotsky

American University Business Law Review

Financial institutional bailouts have become the new normal in recent decades. From the savings and loan crisis, to the sub-prime, to SVB and Signature, the U.S. government and regulators have decided that the failure to protect depositors and investors could lead to bank runs, a destabilized banking sector, and ultimately economic turmoil inflicting tremendous monetary and social costs on citizens. However, the mainstreaming of bailouts has led to moral hazard, i.e., the expectation among all stakeholders including financial institutions, investors, creditors, and regulators, that a government rescue is inevitable. The problem of moral hazard is the creation of incentives to …

Incentivized Delegation In Corporate Criminal Investigations: State Action, Unconstitutional Conditions, And Fifth Amendment Erosion., Ying Zhou

American University Business Law Review

This Article identifies and critiques “incentivized delegation,” an enforcement regime in which the Department of Justice (DOJ) conditions prosecutorial leniency on corporations’ completion of specified, prosecution-oriented, internal investigations of employee misconduct. While courts readily find state action when the government formally delegates investigative functions, they have not squarely addressed whether corporate investigations undertaken to secure prosecutorial leniency—without explicit governmental direction—should likewise trigger state-action scrutiny. United States v. Coburn illustrates the blind spot: by insisting that state action requires overt governmental direction and control, the decision exposes a fundamental failure to appreciate how the government can embed investigative mandates within the …

Better Than Clarity: The Case For A Function-Based Crypto Regulatory Framework, Mercedes Reed

Wyoming Law Review

In an attempt to provide regulatory authority within the digital asset market, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the CLARITY Act. Under the Act, a blockchain first falls under the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission and then transitions to the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the blockchain “matures.” While the Act attempts to bring clarity to regulation within the digital asset industry, it falls short. Because of the Act’s transitional form, gaps are left for issuers to distort definitions and manipulate timelines to secure the oversight they want.

This Article discusses the Act’s shortcomings and …