A substantial body of research suggests that the United States has a distinctive legal style characterized by detailed rules, extensive transparency requirements, adversarial procedures for dispute resolution, costly legal contestation involving many lawyers, and frequent judicial intervention in administrative affairs. Recently, scholars of comparative law and public policy have asked whether this American legal style is spreading around the world. Some scholars have argued that legal styles are converging on an American model, while others have argued that distinctive national legal styles will persist. This article addresses this emerging debate. We argue that American legal style is spreading to other jurisdictions. However, we depart from predominant explanations, which attribute convergence to international regulatory competition or emulation. Instead, we argue that economic liberalization and political fragmentation have undermined traditional approaches to regulation and have generated functional pressures and political incentives to shift toward American legal style.The authors thank Kenneth Abbott, Ward Bower, Kent Calder, Robert G. DeLaMater, Tom Ginsburg, Jack Goldsmith, Milton Heumann, Mark D. Hunsaker, Nicolas Jabko, Robert Kagan, Susan Lawrence, Kathleen McNamara, Michael Paris, Mark Ramseyer, Amy Searight, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Tatsushi Terada, David Vogel, Albert Yoon, and participants in presentations at the 2001 International Studies Association Convention, the 2001 American Political Science Association Convention, Northwestern University's Center for International and Comparative Studies, the University of Chicago Law School, and Princeton University's Center of International Studies for their comments on earlier versions of the article. The authors thank Rachael Snyder, Fatima Khan, Hisako Yamamoto, Masako Ishiwata, and Kei Yamaguchi for their research assistance and Akiko Tsuda, Akemi Ideuchi, and Mio Kato for secretarial assistance. Kelemen thanks the Frank Kneller Fund at Rutgers University and the Center of International Studies at Princeton University for financial support. Views expressed herein are those of the authors alone and are not necessarily those of any institutions with which they are affiliated.
We welcome David Levi-Faur's critique of our article,' both because it serves to stimulate debate on tbis important topic and because it provides us with the opportunity to elaborate on our arguments and touch on their wider potential applicability. Levi-Faur does not take issue with our central empirical finding-tbat American legal style is spreading to other jurisdictions-nor with our normative assessment of the mixed blessings of this trend. We agree with Levi-Faur that many questions concerning legal change have been largely overlooked by political scientists, and we agree tbat he raises a number of points that highlight tbe need for refinements of our argument. Yet, for all tbat we agree on, we disagree strongly with LeviFaur's analysis and his main lines of criticism. His core criticisms concern our conceptualization of the dependent variable in our study, our purported disregard of alternative explanations, and our inadequate attention to the importers of American law and processes of "localization." In this article, we respond to each of these criticisms in turn. We then discuss the generalizability of our argument beyond Europe and Japan. We conclude with suggestions for further research. What Is Spreading?Levi-Faur's first central critique concerns concept formation. Levi-Faur argues that our dependent variable-the spread of American legal style-conflates three separate phenomena. He argues that actually we are observing three diffusion processes-of transparency, of access to justice, and of adversarial legalismand that each of these processes is "governed by its own logic" and results "in its own outcomes." This is problematic, according to Levi-Faur, because the explanation for and the patterns of diffusion for each of these phenomena differ. For 1. Kelemen and Sibbitt 2004.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify trends in the unfolding wave of crypto-securities cases targeting initial coin offerings and discuss the reasons why these suits will likely proliferate. Design/methodology/approach The authors of this paper, all attorneys, conducted a review of 13 crypto-securities cases filed as of February 8, 2018. High-level common themes and trends were identified based on that review. Findings This paper concludes that, for multiple reasons, the number of crypto-securities suits is likely to rise in 2018. Originality/value This paper contains in-depth analysis about trends in crypto-securities suits from experienced securities lawyers.
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