This Article discusses a topical legal issue in the areas of securities, corporate, and administrative law: an ongoing controversy regarding the SEC’s broker-dealer quoting rule, Rule 15c2-11 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For the past fifty years, the rule has been understood to apply only to equity securities (primarily, penny stocks). But more […]

This Article presents original results from a large-scale study of environmental violations. I use the universe of civil Clean Air Act environmental violations by stationary emitters of pollution to test the effectiveness of EPA enforcement. Using conservative assumptions, I find that in 36% of cases, it is profitable for firms to violate the Clean Air […]

Many lower federal courts hold that section 706(2) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), instructs courts reviewing agency regulations to vacate regulations that are unlawful as defined by that provision. Vacatur as the courts understand it is distinct from injunctions against enforcement proceedings and declaratory judgments. Unlike remedies that operate with respect […]

In this Essay, we revisit our analysis in A Sober Look at SPACs and assess whether that analysis—based on the 47 SPACs that merged between January 2019 and June 2020—provided a basis on which to predict that the dilution embedded in the SPAC structure would lead to severe shareholder losses in subsequent mergers. We find […]

Crypto assets and the crypto-asset ecosystem have introduced novel legal challenges, many of which have reached the United States judicial system. In this Essay, I offer the first empirical analysis of all crypto-related cases litigated in the United States, analyzing the number of cases, types of disputes, and causes of actions, among other criteria. The […]

This Essay is part of Bulletin’s symposium on special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). Please click here for an introduction by Professor John Morley putting the 2020 SPAC boom and the regulatory reform agenda into context. Introduction A remarkable fact about modern U.S. securities markets is that most public securities can be safely bought and held by investors who […]

This Essay is part of Bulletin’s symposium on special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). Please click here for an introduction by Professor John Morley putting the 2020 SPAC boom and the regulatory reform agenda into context. Introduction This Essay lays out an economic substance approach to regulating special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) as sales of stock for cash. The […]

This Essay is part of Bulletin’s symposium on special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). Please click here for an introduction by Professor John Morley putting the 2020 SPAC boom and the regulatory reform agenda into context. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Committee’s (SEC) proposed reforms of how it regulates special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) lean heavily on the most […]

This Essay is part of Bulletin’s symposium on special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). Please click here for an introduction by Professor John Morley putting the 2020 SPAC boom and the regulatory reform agenda into context. Introduction The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently proposed regulations that would address a wide range of issues governing special purpose acquisition […]

When the SPAC boom began in the summer of 2020, a common way to explain the phenomenon was to say that SPACs were something new. SPACs raised $83 billion in 2020—nearly double the total raised in the previous ten years—and another $97 billion in just the first three months of 2021. They spread so rapidly […]

Introduction In October 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren and several cosponsors introduced a revised version of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act. First introduced in 2019, the proposed legislation targets a range of perceived abuses by private equity firms ranging from the carried interest tax “loophole” to the lack of risk-retention requirements for securitized debt. Among […]

Workers in the United States depend on their employers for a host of benefits beyond wages and salary. From retirement benefits to health insurance, from student loan repayment to dependent-care spending plans, from disability benefits to family and medical leave, U.S. employers play a uniquely central role in the financial lives of their employees. Yet […]

When purchasing infrastructure, goods or services, the U.S. government has “to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness.” Executive Order No. 13,673, issued by President Obama, expanded the requirement to encompass social sustainability: to promote economy and efficiency in procurement, the government was required to “contract with responsible sources who comply with labor laws.” The Fair Pay […]

Rules are rules and orders are orders, and never the twain shall meet. Generations of scholars and practitioners were taught back in law school that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) divides the universe of agency action into two exclusive and exhaustive categories: “rulemaking,” which is used for promulgating “rules,” and “adjudication,” which is used for […]

Introduction Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has brought job opportunities and a brighter future to somewhere around 700,000 undocumented immigrant youth. Yet some contend that the employment authorization conferred upon DACA recipients renders the program illegal, because it converts it from a mere program of prosecutorial discretion into an ultra vires benefit. This essay […]