Today, my colleague Kristin Beneski and I were honored to file a US Supreme Court amicus brief on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation (“WLF”) in Cyan, Inc. v. Beaver County Employees Retirement Fund. In Cyan, the Supreme Court will decide whether state courts have jurisdiction over securities class actions alleging violations of the Securities Act of 1933, or if federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction. In support of Cyan’s position that federal courts have exclusive…

How will the 2017 arrival of Justice Neil Gorsuch influence the US Supreme Court’s securities-fraud jurisprudence? My colleague Kristin Beneski and I discuss this question in a Washington Legal Foundation Working Paper titled “US Supreme Court Securities-Fraud Jurisprudence:  An Emerging New Direction?” In our Working Paper, we analyze whether Justice Gorsuch may urge the Court to chip away at the viability of securities class actions—such as by revisiting the Basic v. Levinson fraud-on-the-market presumption or…

SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar recently said that the SEC is open to allowing companies that are going public to provide for mandatory shareholder arbitration in their corporate charters.  Piwowar’s remarks have prompted a firestorm of discussion of the issue of mandatory arbitration of securities class actions, including helpful analyses by Alison Frankel and Kevin LaCroix of issues that arbitration provisions would raise. If Piwowar’s thought turns into action, there will be numerous public policy and legal…