Nowhere has disruptive technology had a more profound impact than in financial services—and yet nowhere do academics and policymakers lack a coherent theory of the phenomenon more, much less a coherent set of regulatory prescriptions. Part of the challenge lies in the varied channels through which innovation upends market practices. Problems also lurk in the popular assumption that securities regulation operates against the backdrop of stable market gatekeepers like exchanges, broker-dealers, and clearing systems—a fact scenario increasingly out of sync in twenty-first-century capital markets.

    This Article explains how technological innovation “disrupts” not only capital markets but also the exercise of regulatory supervision and oversight. It provides the first theoretical account tracking the migration of technology across multiple domains of today’s securities infrastructure and argues that an array of technological innovations are facilitating what can be understood as the disintermediation of the traditional gatekeepers that regulatory authorities have relied on (and regulated) since the 1930s for investor protection and market integrity. Effective securities regulation will thus have to be upgraded to account for a computerized (and often virtual) market microstructure that is subject to accelerating change. To provide context, this Article examines two key sources of disruptive innovation: (1) the automated financial services that are transforming the meaning and operation of market liquidity; and (2) the private markets—specifically, the dark pools, electronic communication networks, 144A trading platforms, and crowdfunding websites—that are creating an ever-expanding array of alternatives for both securities issuances and trading.

    Over the past three and a half decades, hundreds of transnational human rights civil suits—i.e., suits seeking monetary compensation for atrocities committed abroad ranging from torture and extrajudicial killing to forced labor and human trafficking—have been filed in the United States. Exhaustive qualitative research chronicles plaintiff “successes” and “failures” as defined by how frequently plaintiffs win, the magnitude of judgments and settlements they obtain, and the extent to which judgments and settlements are enforced. The prevailing wisdom is that while some cases have proven runaway successes along these axes, in general, transnational human rights suits constitute “a modest enterprise akin to personal injury or mass tort suits.” Certain commentators argue that hostility stemming from “foreignness” and reliance on international law is responsible for this underwhelming performance and, in particular, the low win rate in transnational suits. Commentators point to “avoidance doctrines”—such as personal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, abstention comity, and the presumption against extraterritoriality— perceived as the most common means of shunting transnational cases as evidence of courts’ “isolationism.” Other thinkers take the argument a step further, claiming hostility toward international law portends the demise of human rights in federal courts following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (Kiobel II)that fundamentally changed the landscape against which these suits are litigated. But no scholar to date has undertaken a systematic, quantitative examination of such conclusions to determine whether the numbers actually bear them out.

    This Article fills that gap. It collects a new dataset of all cases and opinions filed from 1980 to the present under the two predominant human rights civil statutes to scrutinize these claims and lay the groundwork for future quantitative analysis. The data support three findings. First, the transnational human rights enterprise is modest both in terms of how frequently plaintiffs prevail and how much money they are entitled to and actually do obtain, but not as modest as believed. Second, any modesty is not evidence of courts’ isolationism. The real doctrines most commonly employed to end civil suits prior to Kiobel II suggest that courts do not use domestic law avoidance mechanisms designed to prevent consideration of, and de facto shun, the application of international law. Rather, courts apply international law, including human rights law, but are conservative in their interpretation of it—protecting only certain types of harms committed by certain types of actors. Third, a core group of claims has weathered significant doctrinal shifts over time. Plaintiffs bringing these claims are poised to circumvent Kiobel II and are on track to be as “successful” or “unsuccessful” as ever.

*The dataset associated with this Article—which is current through November 12, 2015, the date this Article was sent to press—is publically available on SSRN and the Fordham Law Review website by clicking here.

    Rule 19 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, concerning the required joinder of parties, ensures that all parties with an interest in an action are joined in the litigation. At any time during the suit, a court may determine that an absent party has a specific interest that requires its presence in the dispute. When the court cannot join the absent party, however, the court must use Rule 19(b) to determine whether to continue the litigation without the absentee or dismiss the suit entirely. Despite the potentially drastic consequence of dismissal, federal courts of appeals cannot agree on the proper standard of review for Rule 19(b) decisions. Should the court review the decision de novo as if it were examining the issue for the first time? Or should it review for abuse of discretion with deference to the district court’s analysis?

    This Note explores the history and application of Rule 19 before examining the two standards of review and the factors set out by the Supreme Court in Pierce v. Underwood to help appellate courts determine which of the two standards should apply. This Note argues that an analysis of those factors demonstrates that both Rule 19(a) and 19(b) decisions should be reviewed for abuse of discretion. It proposes that reviewing courts should use the single standard, but that the amount of deference given to the district court opinion depends on the specific determination within the larger Rule 19 inquiry.

    Patent litigation has multiplied sixfold since the 1980s, with the last few years seeing an unprecedented number of patent lawsuits. When an inventor receives a patent, the U.S. Constitution grants him a monopoly for a limited number of years to reward him for his investment of time and resources and to incentivize him to continue innovating, which ultimately benefits society. However, the emergence of a litigious character, deemed the “patent troll,” has led to the patent system’s hindrance of innovation, a result that is at odds with the primary goal of patent law. Patent trolls exploit weaknesses in the patent system in a number of manners: they assert overly broad patents to force companies into financial settlements because these companies cannot afford the cost of litigation; they deter innovative companies from investing in research and development through the threat of litigation; and they do not practice the patents they hold, thus contributing no innovation in the advancement of technology and immunizing themselves from countersuit. In addition, trolls exhibit anticompetitive behavior, a trend that has caught the eye of the Federal Trade Commission. This Note provides a survey of the modern patent landscape, addressing certain areas of the patent system that patent trolls are able to use to their advantage. This Note then advocates that the Federal Trade Commission play a more integral role in curbing anticompetitive troll behavior and proposes several methods of patent reform.

    Recent amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act have greatly expanded the grounds for removal of lawful permanent residents (LPRs) and, at the same time, constricted judicial review of agency decisions to deport immigrants. Language added to the 212(h) waiver of inadmissibility has increased the number of LPRs that are now ineligible for relief from removal by barring certain LPRs from applying for a waiver if, since the date of their admission, they have committed an aggravated felony or have failed to accrue seven years of continuous presence. The controversy discussed in this Note stems from differing interpretations of this statutory provision.

    Nine courts of appeals have ruled that an aggravated felony or lack of continuous residence bars relief under section 212(h) only for those noncitizens who were admitted to the country as LPRs following inspection at a port of entry. In removal proceedings outside of those circuits, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) holds that relief is unavailable to all LPRs convicted of an aggravated felony or who fail to meet the residence requirements after acquiring LPR status, regardless of the manner in which they acquired that status. The Eighth Circuit alone has followed that ruling (leaving only the First and Twelfth Circuits without an opinion on the issue).

    This Note describes the split over section 212(h) against the backdrop of current trends in immigration law around statutory interpretation and the agency deference doctrine. It analyzes the current state of U.S. Supreme Court deference to the BIA to understand how this issue might play out in the Court and argues that the plain meaning of the statute supports the holdings by the majority of courts of appeals. It concludes by arguing for application of the immigration rule of lenity.

    Two key trends were present in the successful prosecution of Raj Rajaratnam and his coconspirators in one of the largest insider-trading conspiracies in history: the use of wiretaps to investigate and prosecute insider trading and a joint effort between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) to conduct the investigation. Despite the close working relationship between the DOJ and the SEC, the DOJ never disclosed the fruits of the wiretaps to the SEC, presumably due to its belief that Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (as amended, the “Wiretap Act”)—the comprehensive framework that authorizes the government to conduct wiretaps in certain circumstances—prohibited it from doing so.

    Though the Second Circuit in SEC v. Rajaratnam ultimately held that the SEC could obtain wiretap materials from the criminal defendants as part of civil discovery, the question of whether direct disclosure of the wiretap materials from the DOJ to the SEC is prohibited has been raised but not yet addressed. This Note analyzes previous cases addressing the construction of the Wiretap Act’s disclosure provisions and concludes that direct disclosure from the DOJ to the SEC is not prohibited by the Act. It further proposes a process by which civil enforcement agencies, such as the SEC, can request disclosure of wiretap materials through the DOJ in such a way that balances the benefits of disclosure against the privacy interests of the parties whose conversations were intercepted.

    This Note examines the split among the federal circuit courts regarding the application of agency principles to claims of foreign sovereign immunity. Specifically, a minority of courts have applied the doctrine of apparent authority in determining whether a sovereign is bound by the acts of its agents. The majority of courts have, however, declined to apply the doctrine, holding that only actual authority is sufficient to bind sovereigns to their agents’ acts. This Note examines the policy ramifications of the minority view through the lens of sovereign debt litigation, especially those conducted by so-called vulture funds, and ultimately concludes that the minority view should be explicitly disregarded via congressional revision of the statutory scheme governing claims of foreign sovereign immunity.