Call for Papers: Joint Program of the Financial Institutions and European Law Sections, AALS Annual Meeting, New York City (January 3, 2014)

Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms:

Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation

The AALS Section on Financial Institutions & Consumer Financial Services and the Section on European Law are pleased to announce that they are sponsoring a Call for Papers for their joint program on Friday, January 3, at the AALS 2014 Annual Meeting in New York City. Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers.  

The topic of the program and call for papers is “Taking Stock of Post-Crisis Reforms: Local, Global, and Comparative Perspectives on Financial Sector Regulation.”  The financial crisis of 2008 was truly a global crisis, and the world continues to face a wide range of post-crisis economic and political challenges. Today, several years after the market turmoil began, both the United States and the European Union are in the midst of major regulatory reforms in the financial services sector. The effects of these financial regulation reforms however, remain unclear. Structural reform in the U.S. is thus far limited to a yet-to-be finalized "Volcker Rule," while in the U.K. and the Eurozone, respectively, Vickers- and Liikanen-style "ring-fencing" remain incomplete if not inchoate.  Debate in the U.S. still rages around whether and how smaller "community banks" should be regulated differently from megabanks, while the E.U. continues to debate whether to form a "banking union" at all and, if so, what it might or could entail, given various political constraints.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to innovate in the realm of monetary policy in the absence of functional fiscal policy, while the European Central Bank moves furtively toward acting as a full Fed-style central bank capable of backstopping sovereign debt instruments and providing real liquidity.  Where might these multiple developments be ultimately heading, and what might the Americans and Europeans learn from each other as they grope tentatively forward? What broader implications do they raise for political accountability and legitimacy in a post-crisis world?

Form and length of submission

The submissions committee looks forward to reviewing any papers that address the foregoing topics.  While the preference will be given to papers with a clearly comparative focus, the committee’s overall goal is to select papers that will facilitate discussion of, and comparisons between, American and European approaches to various aspects of financial services regulation. Potential topics include macro-prudential regulation, consumer protection, monetary policy, regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries, structural reforms, and related issues of political accountability and legitimacy.

Abstracts should be comprehensive enough to allow the committee to meaningfully evaluate the aims and likely content of papers they propose.  Eligible law faculty are invited to submit manuscripts or abstracts dealing with any aspect of the foregoing topics. Untenured faculty members are particularly encouraged to submit manuscripts or abstracts.  

The initial review of the papers will be blind.  Accordingly the author should submit a cover letter with the paper.  However, the paper itself, including the title page and footnotes must not contain any references identifying the author or the author’s school.  The submitting author is responsible for taking any steps necessary to redact self-identifying text or footnotes. 

Papers may be accepted for publication but must not be published prior to the Annual Meeting.

Deadline and submission method

To be considered, papers must be submitted electronically to Saule Omarova and Peter Lindseth.

The deadline for submission is September 3, 2013. 

Papers will be selected after review by members of a Committee appointed by the Chairs of the two sections.  The authors of the selected papers will be notified by September 30, 2013. 

The Call for Paper participants will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses.

Eligibility

Full-time faculty members of AALS member law schools are eligible to submit papers.  The following are ineligible to submit: foreign, visiting (without a full-time position at an AALS member law school) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, fellows, non-law school faculty, and faculty at fee-paid non-member schools. Papers co-authored with a person ineligible to submit on their own may be submitted by the eligible co-author.  

Please forward this Call for Papers to any eligible faculty who might be interested.