Professor Christina Parajon Skinner recently posted her new article, Central Bank Activism (forthcoming, Duke Law Journal).  The topic couldn’t be more timely or important.  Here’s the abstract:

Today, the Federal Reserve is at a critical juncture in its evolution. Unlike any prior period in U.S. history, the Fed now faces increasing demands to expand its policy objectives to tackle a wide range of social and political problems—including climate change, income and racial inequality, and foreign and small business aid.

This Article develops a framework for recognizing, and identifying the problems with, “central bank activism.” It refers to central bank activism as situations in which immediate public policy problems push central banks to aggrandize their power beyond the text and purpose of their legal mandates, which Congress has established. To illustrate, the Article provides in-depth exploration of both contemporary and historic episodes of central bank activism, thus clarifying the indicia of central bank activism and drawing out the lessons that past episodes should teach us going forward.

The Article urges that, while activism may be expedient in the near term, there are long-term social costs. Activism undermines the legitimacy of central bank authority, erodes its political independence, and ultimately renders a…

When Goldman Sachs petitioned the Supreme Court to grant certiorari from the Second Circuit’s affirmance of a class certification grant, it described the case as having “enormous legal and practical importance,” and later reiterated that it would be “hard to overstate the legal and practical importance of this case.”

By the time we got to oral argument, though … not so much.

I blogged about Goldman Sachs v. Arkansas Teacher Retirement System when it was before the Second Circuit (see here and here), but I only minimally discussed the Supreme Court iteration, in part because I couldn’t figure out what the legal issue was, other than that Goldman thought Amgen Inc. v. Connecticut Ret. Plans & Tr. Funds, 568 U.S. 455 (2013) was wrongly decided.

Well, that was my mistake, because it’s clear now that in fact, Goldman does not think that Amgen was wrongly decided, and the legal issue is that it doesn’t like the fact that it lost in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

That was evident in the briefing, in which it invited the Supreme Court to review the expert evidence submitted to the district court and reweigh it in its favor. (Seriously.…

We are looking to make up to two tenure-track hires at Mississippi College School of Law. I’m chairing the search committee, so please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly if you are interested. Here’s the announcement:

Mississippi College School of Law invites applications from entry-level candidates for multiple tenure-track faculty positions expected to begin July 2021. Our search will focus primarily on candidates with an interest in teaching one or more of the following courses: Contracts, Professional Responsibility, Business Associations, Commercial Paper, Antitrust, Wills and Estates, Trusts, Domestic Relations, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and Trial Advocacy. We seek candidates with a distinguished academic background (having earned a J.D. and/or Ph.D.), a commitment to excellence in teaching, and a demonstrated commitment to scholarly research and publication. We particularly encourage applications from candidates who will enrich the diversity of our faculty. We will consider candidates listed in the AALS-distributed FAR, as well as those who apply directly. Applications should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, a scholarly research agenda, the names and contact information of three references, and teaching evaluations (if available). Applications should be sent in a single PDF to Professor John P. Anderson, Chair, Faculty Appointments Committee, via email…

Christina Sautter and Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci recently uploaded Corporate Governance Gaming to SSRN.  This is the abstract:

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This past Friday and Saturday, The Tobias Leadership Center at Indiana University, the Center for Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, and the American Business Law Journal hosted the online symposium “Ethical Leadership and Legal Strategies for Post-2020 Organizations.”  I wanted to share with readers the program slides Download 2021-Symposium-Slides for “details of the interesting topics and diverse approaches that were taken to the symposium’s theme.” 

The American Business Law Journal anticipates publishing a special issue on the symposium’s theme.  I’ll be sure to keep readers posted!

This week, I offer brief comments on a couple of different things:

1.  I’ve previously blogged about courts that stretch the definition of “forward-looking statement” in order to preclude defendants from claiming the protections of the PSLRA safe harbor.  But probably the more common scenario runs in the other direction.  Behold Police and Fire Retirement System of Detroit v. Axogen, 2021 WL 1060182 (M.D. Fla. Mar. 19, 2021), where the plaintiffs alleged that Axogen claimed that the potential demand for its medical products was very large because of the sheer number of nerve repair surgeries performed every year in the U.S.  As it turned out, far fewer surgeries were performed annually; in effect, the plaintiffs argued that Axogen overstated the size of its market.  Here’s what the court said in its dismissal order:

Plaintiff … [focuses] in particular on statements made in Axogen’s offering materials and elsewhere that a certain number of people in the United States “each year…suffer”  traumatic PNI [peripheral nerve injuries], which “result in over 700,000 extremity nerve repair procedures,” and that “[t]here are more than 900,000 nerve repair surgeries annually in the U.S.”  Plaintiff argues these statements refer to “present existing

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Earlier today, a number of law school securities clinics met online with the SEC thanks to its Office of the Investor Advocate to talk about what they have been seeing in their cases.  By the most recent count, we’re down to only about 12 securities clinics nationwide.  Jill Gross has written about these disappearing clinics.  In my role, I teach business organizations, securities regulation, professional responsibility, and also offer a clinic from time to time.  At UNLV, clinics are not always offered every semester because our faculty also teach other courses.  With the need to turn a clinic on and off, I can’t run the kind of investor protection clinic I ran when I was at Michigan State because the cases just don’t wrap up in a semester.  Although we’ve done it in the past at UNLV with good results for clients and students, it’s not something that works well without attorney support to carry the cases and provide broader assistance when we’re not in session.  With that in mind, we’ve offered a “Public Policy”clinic here this semester with a focus on helping non-profits in preparing comment letters and advocating for their own goals.  This new offering focuses mostly on…