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Public Space or Private Profit? ‘Streateries’ and the Need to Reclaim the Public Realm in the Post-Pandemic City

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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 […]

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“A Vast Labor Bureau”: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Administration of Countervailing Black Labor Power

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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 […]

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Uptier Exchange Transactions: Lawful Innovation or Lender-on-Lender Violence?

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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 […]

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Why Robinhood Is Not a Fiduciary

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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” […]

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Statutory Diagrams

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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 […]

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Agency Lawyers’ Answers to the Major Questions Doctrine

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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 […]

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Accountable Compensation: The Progressive Case for Stakeholder-Focused, Board-Empowering Executive Compensation Laws

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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 […]

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Administrative Regulation of Arbitration

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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 […]

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Penalties in Equity

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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 […]

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Credit Default Swaps on Municipal Bonds

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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 […]

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Products Liability in the Sharing Economy

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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 […]

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Fractional Standing

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Generations of commentators have examined (and critiqued) standing doctrine. The fiercest clash has turned on the question of “injury” — specifically, what type of grievance is sufficient to merit court consideration. Defining “injury” is no easy task, and in recent years, substantial inquiry has focused on just what harms should qualify an individual as “injured.” […]

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Sanctions That Sting: Private Sector Solutions to the Paper Tiger Problem

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Whether used to draw Iran into nuclear talks or condemn apartheid in South Africa, economic sanctions have assumed an increasingly important role in our national security strategy. For one thing, their effectiveness has grown markedly, thanks to today’s global financial interdependence. Moreover, in light of this country’s war-weariness, sanctions provide an alternative to the use […]