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BellSouth Telecomms, LLC v. AEGIS, Ltd Order on Motion to Dismiss Improper Venue and Forum Non Conveniens
No full textText, Tone, and Legal Language: Analyzing Mutual Fund Disclosure Sentiment
No full textMutual fund disclosures must include information about a fund\u27s strategies and risks to comply with the letter of the law. But funds should also honor the spirit of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations, including informing ordinary investors. Disclosure language creates impressions that can be just as important as the content. But evaluating these soft aspects of disclosures is hard. In this article, we propose using disclosure tone—how positive or negative the language is—to empirically capture these impressions. This measure provides an additional tool to assess compliance with the spirit of disclosure laws. Building on finance research on company disclosures, we develop customized dictionaries specific to mutual fund disclosures. We then introduce a novel sentiment‐scoring framework that generates transparent sentence‐ and disclosure‐level scores for our sample of 164,602 mutual fund summary prospectuses (497k) from 2010 to 2020. Our descriptive analysis validates our dictionary by showing meaningful and statistically significant differences across disclosure sections, fund type, and time. Funds\u27 statements of their principal risks are more negative (and uniformly so) across time than funds\u27 descriptions of their investment strategies. We further explore these relationships using a fixed‐effects regression model. These analyses reveal statistically significant relationships between mutual fund disclosure tone and fund attributes, performance, and disclosure characteristics. These relationships are consistent with SEC requirements that anchor risk discussions in more negative language than strategy discussions. The findings also highlight the role of legal language in setting the overall disclosure tone. Our context‐sensitive approach provides a path to regulate compliance more effectively with both the letter and the spirit of the law. Our framework, which we have made publicly available, provides a robust tool to allow researchers and regulators to assess not only what funds say, but how they say it
Preferred Shares, an Overlooked Asset Class, Add Diversification and Income to Portfolios
No full textPreferred shares have high, fixed-dividend rates, often comparable to investment-grade bonds but have become a forgotten asset class for most investors. Preferred shares witnessed a surge of attention during the financial crisis of 2008. Because of their high and steady dividend rates, they should be considered as an asset class for portfolios that seek income. The current analysis shows that when added to a diversified portfolio, preferred shares can increase returns and reduce variance over standard equity/fixed-income portfolios, including those that include some exposure to real estate investment trusts (REITs) for income production
Georgia State Legal Technology Competency Model: A Framework for Examining and Evaluating What it Means to be a Technologically Competent Lawyer
No full textArrests: Legal and Illegal
Full text linkThe Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. An arrest—manifesting a police intention to transport a suspect to the stationhouse for booking, fingerprinting, and photographing—is a mode of seizure. Because arrests are so intrusive, they require roughly a fifty percent chance that an arrestable offense has occurred. Because nonarrest seizures (aka Terry stops), though no “petty indignity,” are less intrusive than arrests, they require roughly just a twenty-five percent chance that crime is afoot.
Any arrest not supported by probable cause is illegal. It would therefore seem to follow that any arrest supported by probable cause is legal. But it does not always follow, at least not in the Supreme Court. Instead, the Court has ruled some arrests illegal despite the presence of probable cause, the Court’s concern there being with where the arrest took place. Specifically, the Court has ruled repeatedly that an otherwise legal arrest is illegal when performed in a residence that police illegally have entered.
While not about what can count as probable cause, or count as an arrest, this Essay is about their relation. My intention is to demonstrate first that all arrests supported by probable cause are legal, regardless of where they occur or when the probable cause originates; and second that the legality of an arrest is an issue separate from the admissibility of evidence derived from an arrest. To that end, this Essay analyzes an undisturbed line of Supreme Court cases from 1980 to 1990—United States v. Crews, Payton & Riddick v. New York, Welsh v. Wisconsin, Minnesota v. Olson, and New York v. Harris— which when read together can make only misleading sense. By exposing the Court’s penchant for mischaracterizing legal arrests— including those performed with excessive force—as illegal, this Essay concludes that highlighting the proper function of probable cause within the law of arrests can reconcile a currently irreconcilable line of cases
Constitutional Interpretation and Zombie Provisions
Full text linkThis Article analyzes the presence of zombie provisions in the United States Constitution and state constitutions and the danger that these provisions may influence the interpretation of still-living constitutional provisions
The Keynote Address to Georgia State University College of Law\u27s 29th Annual Law Review Symposium - Access to AI Justice: A Global Response to a Global Crisis
Full text linkTranscript of the Keynote Address given at the 29th Annual Georgia State University Law Review Symposium on March 22, 2024. This transcript has been edited for readability and clarity
Known Unknowns: Unmeasurable Hazards and the Limits of Risk Regulation
No full textKnown unknowns are identifiable hazards that pose an unquantifiable risk of harm. The inability to characterize known unknowns in terms of measurable risk poses a dilemma for regulators. When known unknowns cause harm, public pressure often leads Congress to mandate that agencies establish specific, science-based thresholds for acceptable risk. In response, regulators, who lack scientific evidence to justify such rules, face a choice: they can either delay the rulemaking process or fabricate a scientific justification. If they adopt the first option, they expose themselves to potential litigation by public interest groups demanding that they comply with the law. If they adopt the second option, they expose themselves to potential litigation by regulated entities challenging the new rules as arbitrary and capricious. What\u27s an agency to do?
This Article develops general principles for addressing known unknowns using a case study of efforts to regulate agricultural water quality. Contaminated water used to cultivate fresh produce is a well-known cause of recurrent foodborne illness outbreaks. Unfortunately, it has, so far, proven impossible to reliably quantify the risk of human illness from any given source of agricultural water. A detailed analysis of the challenges that have frustrated successful regulation of agricultural water quality provides the basis for specific, feasible recommendations to help regulators cope with known unknowns in a variety of contexts, such as climate change, environmental toxins, and pandemic response.
When confronting known unknowns, regulators should prioritize harm reduction strategies that generate new policy-relevant information. Additionally, they should rely on localized private governance efforts endorsed by a broad representation of stakeholders. Finally, regulators should be more transparent about the limits of risk regulation