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Centralization in Decentralized Finance: Systemic Risk in the Crypto Ecosystem and Crypto\u27s Future as a Regulated Industry
No full textThe Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Redistricting Commissions in the 2021 Cycle
No full textIn the last decade, redistricting commissions have proliferated across the United States as a means of reducing partisan gerrymandering. This article provides a comprehensive evaluation of their performance using both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Drawing on redistricting data from all fifty states between 2021 and 2024, we analyze how different commission designs affected partisan fairness, competitiveness, and adherence to traditional principles like compactness and preservation of communities of interest. Our analysis reveals that autonomous commissions with final map-drawing authority, balanced bipartisan processes with multiple non-partisan actors, and binding judicial review consistently produced redistricting plans with lower partisan bias and higher electoral competition. These successful commissions were typically established through popular ballot initiatives. Conversely, commissions serving only in an advisory role, dominated by a single party, or lacking clear judicial oversight frequently saw their work undermined by legislatures pursuing partisan advantage. We conclude that autonomous commissions, created by and composed of citizens, provide the most effective available approach for curbing gerrymandering. The article concludes with recommendations for expanding the commission model for the 2030 redistricting cycle
The Future of Alaska’s Wetlands in a Post-Sackett World
No full textIn 2023, the United States Supreme Court decided Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, which effectively restricted the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ (“USACE”) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to regulate development of wetlands. The State of Alaska submitted an amicus brief to the Court on behalf of the petitioners, the Sackett family. In the wake of the decision, Governor Dunleavy praised the decision by the Court, emphasizing that the decision provided the state more autonomy over its own wetlands. Still, there is concern by environmentalists that the State does not have the resources to protect the wetlands to the extent necessary without federal funding and support. Alaska encompasses more than half of America’s wetlands, so the challenge for the State’s environmental programs is substantial. This Note will explore the ramifications of Sackett and what it means for Alaska. Then, it will examine what Alaska must do to continue to protect its wetlands and survey its progress following the Sackett decision. Further, it will examine how federal regulations under the EPA will fare in a post-Chevron world. Finally, this Note will offer recommendations for best practices by the State to ensure Alaska protects its vital wetlands, as well as insight into how best to prepare for the inevitability of further litigation over these areas
SB 86/HB 99: Navigating Alaska’s Digital Renaissance – A Strategic Approach to Virtual Currency Regulation
No full textAlaska is navigating a transformative phase in its regulatory approach to virtual currency transmission, driven by the rapid growth of the fintech industry and the unique economic and geographic challenges faced by its residents. As the number of virtual currency transactions in Alaska has surged dramatically over recent years, the State’s existing money transmission framework—rooted in laws designed before the rise of cryptocurrencies and internet-based financial services—has proven insufficient to address this evolving landscape.
In light of the wide adoption of virtual currency by consumers, Alaska has implemented targeted amendments to its Administrative Code and proposed the Alaska Uniform Money Transmission Modernization Act (the “AUMTMA”) through Senate Bill 86 and House Bill 99 (collectively, “SB 86/HB 99”). These regulatory developments aim to provide clarity on virtual currency activities, streamline licensing processes, enhance consumer protections, and align the regulation of money transmission in Alaska with the Model Money Transmission Modernization Act (the “Model Law”).
Alaska’s adoption of SB 86/HB 99 would enable a more seamless approach to regulation than the status quo of conflicting laws, as well as help preserve Alaska’s limited resources with respect to licensing and supervisory efforts. Currently, inconsistencies in and across state money transmission regulations function as a barrier to market entry. In effect, slow market entry deters product innovation, which hinders the ability for Alaskans to keep up with an evolving economy and the digitally connected world.
Despite market advancements, the legislative process for broader reforms, such as the adoption of SB 86/HB 99, remains uncertain. This Article provides an in-depth examination of Alaska’s regulatory history, the reasons for change, and the ongoing efforts to harmonize state regulations with national standards while addressing the distinct needs of Alaskan consumers and businesses.
Furthermore, this Article explores the implications of virtual currency bankruptcies, such as Voyager Digital and Celsius Network, which underscored the vulnerabilities of unregulated or under-regulated markets and led to frozen assets for Alaskan investors. It also evaluates the role of fintech innovations like mobile payment systems in bridging gaps for rural communities with limited access to traditional banking services. This Article highlights Alaska’s efforts to strike a balance between fostering innovation in the digital economy and safeguarding consumers and investors from potential risks.
As the State moves forward, the success of these initiatives will depend on effective legislative support, robust stakeholder engagement, and the ability to adapt to the dynamic and fast-paced nature of the fintech ecosystem. Alaska’s experience offers valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of integrating virtual currencies into traditional regulatory frameworks and positions the State as a potential leader in navigating the digital financial revolution
Illegal Corporate Cultures
Full text linkCulture is a powerful force in corporate compliance. Corporate culture shapes how employees behave, dictating whether, when, and how they follow the law. Cases arising out of cultural failures often involve public harm—plane crashes, poisoned rivers, tainted cancer drugs, and collapsed mines. Before these awful outcomes, however, the corporations that caused these harms fostered cultures that permitted the disregard of legal commands and public commitments. Managers disparaged safety regulations. Messages about profits and production drowned out messages about compliance and safety. Yet, there is a gap between all we know about the power of culture and our understanding of corporate law doctrine\u27s power to change it.
This Article makes sense of that gap and offers a theoretical framework to bridge it by arguing that culture plays a more central role in the essential elements of oversight doctrine than scholars have yet recognized. Corporate directors and officers have fiduciary duties that require them to oversee a firm\u27s compliance with law. Through the Caremark doctrine, shareholders have the power to assert claims against corporate leaders if the corporation fails to adequately oversee its legal compliance.
When cultural risks are viewed as legal risks, the real power of shareholder oversight can be harnessed to prevent corporate acts of public harm. Culture already informs key features of corporate oversight doctrine. This Article explains that legal risk, good faith, and mission critical risk—essential components of modern oversight doctrine—each implicitly interrogate the culture of the firm. With this understanding, this Article demonstrates that corporate law—in the form of the Caremark doctrine—can and should require managerial oversight of corporate culture to ensure that firms take seriously their promises of legal compliance
Listening on Campus: Academic Freedom and its Audiences
No full textCurrent debates about campus speech often conflate two related but importantly distinct values: free speech and academic freedom. Both are widely perceived to be in crisis, but they are not interchangeable, and slippage between the two makes it even harder to frame, let alone address, difficult questions about speech in university settings. Many of the most fundamental challenges—indeed, much of what makes campus speech unique in the first place—arise from the need to accommodate both values. In doing so, defenders of academic freedom must, as advocates of free speech have, more clearly articulate an account of listener interests. The basic project of this Article is to frame that challenge and take a few initial steps toward answering it
Multi-Risk Governance of Solar Radiation Modification
Full text linkSolar radiation modification (SRM) presents important challenges to risk regulation and governance, arising from the array of multiple risks that SRM may influence. SRM would not simply reverse climate change, but could pose further ancillary impacts, depending on the method of SRM, such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening (MCB), or a space-based planetary sunshade system (PSS). We identify multiple risks that SRM may influence, both biophysical and sociopolitical, to be compared to the multiple risks that may be affected by greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and climate adaptation. This multi-risk framework helps analysts and decision makers identify, evaluate, and compare multiple risks holistically; helps identify affected groups to overcome problems of disregard and omitted voice; helps compare policy options and map the array of risks to corresponding (or missing) governance mechanisms; and seeks risk-superior policies that would reduce multiple risks in concert. We then examine governance frameworks: uncoordinated, coordinated and comprehensive. We suggest two key mechanisms that can help build up from uncoordinated toward more coordinated or even comprehensive approaches, and that can gain support from SRM advocates, observers and critics alike: a series of international assessments of SRM, and a transparent international monitoring system for SRM
The SCOTUS Tournament: Winning Isn\u27t Everything
No full textLitigation at the U.S. Supreme Court is a tournament of champions. This Essay presents an empirical analysis of Supreme Court advocacy over time (1970-2023), examining how the elitification of the legal profession has transformed Supreme Court oral arguments. Drawing on a dataset of 7,077 cases and 4,599 private attorneys, we analyze the rise of repeat players and their litigation success. Our findings reveal a transformation. In the 1970s, most Court advocates were rookies: first-time advocates from various backgrounds. Today, a small number of superstars dominate: attorneys with extensive experience, elite law school degrees, Supreme Court clerkships, and stints in the Office of the Solicitor General. Contrary to conventional wisdom that experience creates overwhelming advantages, our head-to-head analysis reveals nuanced patterns. These findings complicate prevailing capture narratives suggesting corporate interests systematically gained advantage through elite lawyer procurement. While elitification is undeniable, competitive dynamics are complex. Experience provides meaningful but not determinative advantages. The Supreme Court bar increasingly resembles elite tennis championships where skilled players face comparable opponents, rather than mismatched professional-versus-amateur contests
Copyrighting Style
No full textDoes copyright law protect an artist’s style? The federal courts that have considered the question are equally split. They all agree, however, that the answer to the question resides in copyright law’s idea/expression distinction. According to this doctrine, ideas, techniques, and methods cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of ideas can be. The question courts have faced, then, is whether artistic style is an idea or a matter of expression. The answer, perhaps unfortunately, is that style is both.
This is unfortunate because, this Article argues, copyright law’s idea/expression distinction is inadequate to the task of determining the copyrightability of style. Instead, it proposes a new way forward, grounded in aesthetic philosophy and a much-derided precedent, that embraces style’s dual nature. Just as style is both a matter of content and of form, so too is the copyrightable work both a matter of idea and of expression. On this understanding, defendants should only be found liable for infringement when they have copied both the plaintiffs’ expressive formal features and the ideas, content, or subject matter to which they have been applied.
Solving this problem is essential in light of the recent lawsuits against generative artificial intelligence platforms that make it trivially easy to produce images and text “in the style of” various artists. Copyright law needs a more coherent approach to this problem than it has achieved with its reliance on the idea/expression distinction