Issue 1 | Volume 89 | Law Review at Washington University in St. Louis

Tyrell Williams Memorial Lecture

Key Implications of the Dodd-Frank Act for Independent Regulatory Agencies

Joel Seligman

The enactment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act both transcends and transforms financial regulation. The immediate setting of the law is by now a familiar one. By 2008, there was an urgent need for a fundamental restructuring of federal financial regulation, primarily based on three overlapping causes. First, an ongoing economic emergency initially rooted in our housing and credit markets, which has been succeeded by the…

Article

Offsetting and the Consumption of Social Responsibility

Ezra Rosser

This Article examines the relationship between individual consumption and consumption-based harms by focusing on the rise in consumption offsetting. Carbon offsets are but the leading edge of a rise in consumer options for offsetting externalities associated with consumption. Moving from examples of quasi offsetting to environmental offsetting and the possibility of poverty offset institutions, I argue that offsetting provides a valuable mechanism for individuals to correct for the harms associated…

Article

In Defense of the Substance-Procedure Dichotomy

Jennifer S. Hendricks

John Hart famously observed, “We were all brought up on sophisticated talk about the fluidity of the line between substance and procedure,” but for most of Erie’s history, the Supreme Court has answered the question “Does this state law govern in federal court?” with a “yes” or a “no.” Beginning, however, with Gasperini v. Center for Humanities, and continuing with Semtek v. Lockheed Martin and the dissenting opinion in Shady…

Article

Activist Distressed Debtholders: The New Barbarians at the Gate?

Michelle M. Harner

The term “corporate raiders” previously struck fear in the hearts of corporate boards and management teams. It generally refers to investors who target undervalued, cash-flush or mismanaged companies and initiate a hostile takeover of the company. Corporate raiders earned their name in part because of their focus on value extraction, which could entail dismantling a company and selling off its crown jewels. Today, the term often conjures up images of…

Note

Missouri’s Health Care Battle and Differential Judicial Review of Popular Lawmaking

Raquel Frisardi

Note

Bringing RICO to the Ring: Can the Anti-Mafia Weapon Target Dogfighters?

Matthew C. Heger

Commentary

Toward a Reality-Based Constitutional Theory

Andrew Coan

Despite the alleged triumph of legal realism and the empirical turn of closely related fields such as judicial behavior, a startling number of constitutional theorists continue to approach their work as a purely conceptual enterprise. This is particularly true of originalists, but it is true of many others as well. Indeed, much of normative constitutional theory as it is presently practiced resembles a recreational debating society more than a serious…

Table of Contents

Key Implications of the Dodd-Frank Act for Independent Regulatory Agencies

Offsetting and the Consumption of Social Responsibility

In Defense of the Substance-Procedure Dichotomy

Activist Distressed Debtholders: The New Barbarians at the Gate?

Missouri’s Health Care Battle and Differential Judicial Review of Popular Lawmaking

Bringing RICO to the Ring: Can the Anti-Mafia Weapon Target Dogfighters?

Toward a Reality-Based Constitutional Theory

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