Pharmaceutical innovation relies on pharmaceutical firms’ ability to acquire promising new molecules and the biotech firms that discovered them. Such nascent competitor acquisitions allow the pharmaceutical industry to efficiently finance the risky drug development process. But they also enable “killer acquisitions,” where incumbents purchase startups and discontinue their promising drug projects to protect existing products. […]

The False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions, authorizing private parties or relators to sue on behalf of the U.S. government, have faced renewed constitutional challenges despite record recoveries. Within the past two years, three Supreme Court Justices suggested qui tam may violate Article II of the Constitution, and a district court dismissed a qui tam […]

The pandemic brought with it the entrenchment of a massively trans-formed cityscape. From car-free streets to widespread private dining in parking spots, what began as a series of temporary municipal authorizations have since transitioned into permanent programs. For some, these urban changes are unalloyed goods—who doesn’t want to drink al fresco at 3pm on a […]

Mass shootings are a particularly gutting form of American gun violence. The statistics are staggering to the point of numbing, with the issue’s intensity and timeliness enforced day after day, round after round. Gun manufacturers occupy a vital role in the chain of events ending with mass shooting headlines, yet they face little liability for […]

For a few short years starting in 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau exercised regulatory power over labor markets in a fashion unprecedented in ambition, scope, and reach in U.S. history up to that point—and, arguably, since. The Bureau used its broad authority to construct, regulate, and coordinate labor in the post-slavery South according to a racial-egalitarian vision […]

This Note examines the recent phenomenon of “uptier exchange transactions”: transactions in which a borrower takes assignment of existing loans from participating lenders—those lenders holding a majority of the principal amount of the loan—and then issues new superpriority tranches of debt to the participating lenders, subordinating nonparticipating lenders in the process. Uptier exchange transactions were […]

This Note examines the theoretical and practical limitations of regulating broker-dealers under a fiduciary-duty paradigm. Drawing on a recent example of fiduciary regulation of broker-dealers in Massachusetts, as well as recent literature on the theoretical underpinnings of fiduciary relationships, this Note argues that fintech broker-dealers like Robinhood lack the elements of “discretion” and “best interest” […]

The Federal Reserve’s recent, unprecedented corporate debt purchases will further reduce the cost of corporate debt relative to equity. Given the already high degree of leverage in the corporate sector, I argue that this is a dangerous policy choice. However, the best solution is not to outlaw the Fed’s crisis actions, but to reform other […]

We live in a republic of statutes, yet understanding those statutes has become so cognitively difficult that judges cannot properly interpret them, citizens cannot properly understand them, and legislatures cannot properly write them. This Note presents a new tool for reducing the cognitive difficulty of understanding and applying statutes: statutory diagrams. The Note presents the […]

This Note addresses two questions: how does the major questions doctrine affect the way agency lawyers advise policymaking clients, and how does that advice affect agency statutory interpretation and regulation? I first describe the doctrine and discuss normative theories for the role agency lawyers should play in statutory interpretation. Second, I consider the effects the […]

Shareholder primacy has long dominated American legal thought and politics across the ideological spectrum. Over the past several years, however, U.S. political progressives have begun to criticize shareholder primacy, arguing that corporations should also serve other stakeholders. This Note conducts the first academic analysis of this emerging movement’s executive compensation policy proposals. This Note finds […]

In Epic Systems v. Lewis, a case on arbitration agreements and class action waivers, the U.S. Supreme Court tangentially addressed the intersection of arbitration and agency deference. The Court’s opinion highlighted a gap in legal scholarship: very little has been written on administrative regulation of arbitration. By cataloging for the first time the instances in which […]

This Note defends the SEC’s statutory authority to seek judicial disgorgement. In Kokesh v. SEC, the Supreme Court held that judicial disgorgement brought by the SEC constitutes a penalty for the purpose of the five-year statute of limitations in 28 U.S.C. § 2462. In the following months, scholars and practitioners—and at least one putative class […]

The municipal bond market has traditionally been viewed as a relatively safe market, where credit risk wasn’t a primary concern. The spate of fiscal crises that state and local governments have experienced in recent years, however, has changed this narrative. With credit risk increasingly on the forefront of investors and bond issuers’ minds, credit default […]

The Note analyzes an unexplored question in tort law: what role, if any, does products liability have in the sharing economy? The Note first evaluates the potential for products liability claims related to web applications and the shared physical product that make up the sharing economy. Additionally the Note considers the possible defendants in a […]