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Conflicts of interest are a serious problem in scholarship. Transparency and discounting, while necessary, are insufficient to protect the marketplace of ideas. Why?  Founder effects and dilution of expertise, explain Maurice E. Stucke and R. Alexander Bentley. To protect the integrity of academia, we must also encourage the injection and consideration of new and contradictory unconflicted ideas.

The following is an excerpt from Brody Mullins and Luke Mullins’s book,“The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government,” now available from Simon and Schuster.

In this second installment of a two-part series, David Dubrow and Kent Hiteshew propose reforms to improve disclosure standards in the municipal bond market, exploring both legislative and regulatory approaches. They outline eight key guidelines for enhancing transparency and consistency in municipal offering statements, aiming to bring these disclosures into the modern era and better protect investors.

Two municipal market veterans, David Dubrow and Kent Hiteshew, delve into the history and current state of disclosure practices in the municipal bond market, highlighting the flaws in the current system. In a follow up, the authors will explore potential paths to reform and key components of a uniform standard of disclosure for municipal securities.

Richard R. John recounts how in the twentieth century the once-mighty Bell System, whose descendants include today’s Verizon and AT&T, waged a powerful decades-long public relations campaign, including the funding of history books and research centers, to persuade the public that its success rested in technological imperatives and economic incentives rather than a favorable regulatory landscape. Though the Bell PR campaign failed to stop three highly effective antitrust suits, it succeeded in establishing a story about management, competition, and innovation that many Americans—including several of today’s Big Tech critics—have uncritically repeated.

Joel Seligman's article examines the historical debate surrounding the Securities and Exchange Commission's mandatory corporate disclosure system, focusing on George Stigler's influential 1964 critique and subsequent discussions. While acknowledging Stigler's role in sparking important questions about regulatory necessity, Seligman argues that critics often underestimated the historical evidence of securities fraud and the need for public market confidence, ultimately defending the continued relevance of mandated disclosure in securities regulation.

Randy Priem reviews the current discussions about fortifying the independence of determination committees deciding whether a credit event took place for single-name credit default swaps. He offers several possible strategies.

W.C. Bunting and Tomer Stein investigate the role of amicus curiae process in the development of business law cases at the state level. The findings reveal that the business law amicus curiae process is dominated by lobbying groups, particularly by associations serving big business, and that these "Amicus Lobbying" efforts have a higher success rate compared to non-lobbying groups.

An excerpt from the second edition of Marion Nestle's book, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, out now.

An excerpt from Mehrsa Baradaran's new book, The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America, out now.