Article

Index funds own an increasingly large proportion of American public companies. The stewardship decisions of index fund managers—how they monitor, vote, and engage with their portfolio companies—can be expected to have a profound impact on the governance and performance of public companies and the economy. Understanding index fund stewardship, and how policymaking can improve it, is thus critical for corporate law scholarship. In this Article...

Civil forfeiture is controversial. Critics allege that law enforcement authorities use forfeiture to take property from often-innocent victims free of the constraints of criminal process. Yet despite recent statutory reforms, a significant obstacle to meaningful change remains: Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, the Constitution imposes few limits on civil forfeiture. Relying on a perceived tradition of largely unfettered government power...

The financial crisis exposed major fault lines in banking and financial markets more broadly. Policymakers responded with far-reaching regulation that created a new agency—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—and changed the structure and function of these markets.

Consumer advocates cheered reforms as welfare enhancing, while the financial sector declared that consumers would be harmed by interventions. With a decade of data now...

Article II of the United States Constitution vests “the executive power” in the President. For more than two hundred years, advocates of presi­dential power have claimed that this phrase was originally understood to include a bundle of national security and foreign affairs authorities. Their efforts have been highly successful. Among constitutional original­ists, this so-called “Vesting Clause Thesis” is now conventional wisdom. But it...

THE AESTHETICS OF DISABILITY

Jasmine E. Harris *

The foundational faith of disability law is the proposition that we can reduce disability discrimination if we can foster interactions between disabled and nondisabled people. This central faith, which is rooted in contact theory, has encouraged integration of people with and without disabilities, with the expectation that contact will reduce preju­dicial atti­tudes and shift societal norms. However, neither the scholarship nor disa­bility law...

A handful of digital platforms mediate a growing share of online commerce and communications. By structuring access to markets, these firms function as gatekeepers for billions of dollars in economic activity. One feature dominant digital platforms share is that they have inte­grated across business lines such that they both operate a platform and market their own goods and services on it. This structure places domi­nant platforms in direct competition...

COIN-OPERATED CAPITALISM

Shaanan Cohney,* David Hoffman,** Jeremy Sklaroff *** & David Wishnick ****

This Article presents the legal literature’s first detailed analysis of the inner workings of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). We characterize the ICO as an example of financial innovation, placing it in kinship with venture capital contracting, asset securitization, and (obviously) the IPO. We also take the form seriously as an example of technological innovation, in which promoters are beginning to effectuate their promises to investors through...

LIFE AFTER JANUS

Aaron Tang *

The axe has finally fallen. In Janus v. American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees, Council 31, the Supreme Court struck down the major source of financial security enjoyed by public-sector unions, which represent nearly half of the nation’s fifteen million union members. Countless press stories, law review articles, and amicus briefs have criticized and defended this outcome.

This Article has a different...

Disclosure enjoys a unique position within the spectrum of campaign finance regulation. It is the only regulation that courts have looked upon with consistent approval. Since Buckley v. Valeo, courts have upheld disclosure requirements as advancing an “informational inter­est”—very broadly defined as the interest in educating voters about the sponsors behind political messages. Disclosure’s informational interest has been deemed...

UNSEXING PREGNANCY

David Fontana* & Naomi Schoenbaum**

Because sex does not dictate the capacity to provide care in the home or work in the market, sex-equality law combats harmful sex ste­reotypes by eliminating statutes and regulations that assign these roles on the basis of sex. When it comes to pregnancy, though, courts and commentators alike chart a very different course. They assume that pregnancy is a biological event that is almost exclusively for women. Thus, equal protection jurisprudence...