Introduction On October 5, when the U.S. Supreme Court hears Salman v. United States, it will focus on the role of the “personal benefit” test in insider trading law for the first time since the test was established in the now iconic 1983 case Dirks v. SEC. Dirks reaffirmed the principle that trading on the…
The history of insider trading law is a tale of administrative usurpation and legislative acquiescence. Congress has never enacted a prohibition against insider trading, much less defined it. Instead, the SEC has led in defining insider trading, albeit without the formality of rulemaking, and subject to varying degrees of oversight by the courts. The reason…
Introduction This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in Salman v. United States to consider the scope of insider trading liability under the federal securities laws. Specifically, the Court will consider the legal standard for tippee liability, a standard that it first articulated in its 1983 decision in Dirks v. SEC. Dirks considered…
I. The Issues in Salman If Maher Kara, the Citigroup analyst at the center of the Salman case now before the Supreme Court, was forbidden under SEC Rule 10b-5 from trading securities for his own account while in possession of the valuable secrets to which his job gave him access, should he instead be able…
The Supreme Court’s 2016 term officially begins on the first Monday in October. But corporate insiders, securities analysts, and professional traders (as well as securities lawyers and scholars) are focusing their attention on Wednesday, October 5, when the Court, for the first time in nearly two decades, will hear argument in an insider trading case.…
