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Volume 4.1
Horizons of Risk: Climate Stress and the Federal Reserve
David A. Wishnick
Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center.

Thanks to Nakita Cuttino, Anna Gelpern, David Hyman, Don Langevoort, Adam Levitin, Morgan Ricks, Hillary Sale, Bob Thompson, Jon Zytnick, and workshop participants at Georgetown, Rutgers, Vanderbilt, and the AALS Financial Regulation Midyear Meeting for helpful comments and engaging discussions. For their skilled research assistance, I thank Maddie Bowen, Matteo Crow, and Amelia Lucas.

Contemporary financial supervision depends on knowledge about risk. Threats to bank soundness and financial stability abound, but they present themselves in amorphous ways. How should supervisors assess their significance? This Article examines a process being employed by the Federal Reserve (Fed) to assess threats posed by climate change.

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Volume 4.1
A Commitment Rule for Insolvency Forum
Anthony J. Casey
Donald M. Ephraim Professor of Law and Economics and Faculty Director of the Center on Law and Finance at The University of Chicago Law School. Email: ajcasey@uchicago.edu.

This research is funded by the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. The Richard Weil Faculty Research Fund and the Paul H. Leffmann Fund also provided generous support. I thank Carrie Boone, Taerin Kim, and Emma Xu for their excellent research assistance. A preliminary version of this article was presented at Singapore Management University during my stay as SGRI Visiting Professor in September 2023.

Aurelio Gurrea-Martínez
Associate Professor of Law and Head of the Singapore Global Restructuring Initiative at Singapore Management University. Email: aureliogm@smu.edu.sg.

For excellent research assistance, I would like to thank Linus Koh.

Robert K. Rasmussen
Professor of Law and J. Thomas McCarthy Trustee Chair in Law and Political Science at USC Gould School of Law. Email: rrasmussen@law.usc.edu.

In this Article, we propose a new rule for determining the proper forum for insolvency proceedings. Currently, the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (Model Law)—promulgated by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL)—looks to a debtor’s center of main interest (COMI) to determine the proper forum for a foreign main insolvency proceeding. This rule is flawed.

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Volume 4.1
Event Contracts Are a Step Too Far for Derivatives Regulation
Ilya Beylin
Associate Professor, Seton Hall Law School, B.A.S. Stanford University, J.D. University of Chicago Law School. 

Devin Droll and Najma Hassan provided valuable research assistance. I am grateful for feedback from Tom W. Bell, Onnig H. Dombalagian, Gary E. Kalbaugh, Stephen Lubben, Gideon Mark, Fabio Mattos, Todd Phillips, Andrew Verstein, Adam Wells and participants at the Seton Hall Law School summer scholarship seminar, inaugural Metropolitan Junior Scholars workshop and the AALS Financial Institutions Regulation mid-year meeting at The Wharton School. All errors are my own.

This Article develops two branches of history towards understanding derivatives markets and their regulation. First, using a comprehensive database of derivatives products that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has authorized, this Article traces stages in the development of derivatives products.

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Volume 4.1
Captured Innovation: Technology Monopoly Response to Transformational Development
Reed Showalter
Reed Showalter is an Attorney Advisor at the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. He was a Senior Policy Advisor at the White House National Economic Council until January 20, 2025. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of Justice or the White House.
Laura Edelson
Laura Edelson is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University.

This Article examines how monopoly power warps incentives to innovate within the largest tech companies across history.

Featured Articles From The Online Edition

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Online Edition '25
Is There Always Money in the Banana Stand? The Importance of Fee Awards to Vindicating Shareholder Voting Rights
James Janison
Associate at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossman LLP.  All views expressed herein are my own and not those of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP or its clients.

A recurring joke in the TV series Arrested Development is that a real estate mogul beset by hard financial times refrains to his son, “there’s always money in the [family-owned] banana stand.” Every time he does, the son—who has taken over the family real estate empire—expresses exasperation, as a boardwalk shop selling frozen bananas is obviously no cure for the family’s financial woes. In an act of defiance, the son eventually burns the banana stand down. Enraged, the real estate mogul explains that there was literally $250,000 in cash lining its walls. The stockholder franchise is Delaware’s banana stand.

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Online Edition '25
Spot the Difference: Examining the SEC’s Treatment of Bitcoin Futures and Spot Exchange-Traded Funds
Jenny Hu
Brown University ‘26

Thank you to Ari Gabinet, Senior Fellow in Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, for his invaluable insights.

The issue of Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs) is not new, but it has only recently surged into the public consciousness with the SEC’s reluctant approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January 2024. However, the general discourse surrounding these novel financial products is mixed: to some, they pose a threat to market stability and open a door for hefty investor losses; to others, they represent a crucial step in the greater legitimization of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as viable assets.

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Online Edition '24
Fair Accountability for Pharmaceutical Companies: It’s Time to Discard the Learned Intermediary Doctrine
Steven R. Salbu
Cecil B. Day Chair in Business Ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business

For over half a century, pharmaceutical companies have been shielded under the “learned intermediary doctrine” should their products cause harm to patients. Under the doctrine, physicians are considered learned intermediaries who understand drug risks and counsel their patients accordingly, absolving the manufacturer of the duty to warn patients about potential drug risks and dangers. Contemporary medical and commercial practices have fundamentally changed the roles of both physicians and pharmaceutical manufacturers, such that it’s time for states to discard the learned intermediary doctrine and hold the drug companies themselves accountable for failure to warn.

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Online Edition '24
Developing a Coherent National Strategy: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Copyright Law
Nikki Chavez Brown
University of Chicago Law School '25

In 2023, half of senior information technology business executives surveyed worldwide considered artificial intelligence (AI) to be a technology of strategic importance that they would prioritize in 2024. Between 2017 and 2020, funding of AI startups increased from $18 billion to $26 billion. In 2023, seventy-three percent of U.S. companies have begun implementing AI technologies. The growing interest in AI is not limited to corporations.