Lev Menand

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Essay
Volume 92.2
Regionalism and the Federal Reserve Banks
Kathryn Judge
Harvey J. Goldschmid Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.

The authors are grateful to Scott Baker, Michael Held, Patricia Mosser, Nathan Tankus, and the participants at the Washington University Law and Economics Workshop and the Women in Law and Finance Workshop at Wharton for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Brian Japari and Alex MacDonald provided exceptionally helpful research assistance. Research for this publication is made possible in part by The Leichtman-Levine Faculty Research Fund at Columbia Law School.

Lev Menand
Associate Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.

The authors are grateful to Scott Baker, Michael Held, Patricia Mosser, Nathan Tankus, and the participants at the Washington University Law and Economics Workshop and the Women in Law and Finance Workshop at Wharton for helpful comments on earlier drafts. Brian Japari and Alex MacDonald provided exceptionally helpful research assistance. Research for this publication is made possible in part by The Leichtman-Levine Faculty Research Fund at Columbia Law School.

Regionalism is central to our country’s central banking system. Rather than rely on a single organization, Congress created twelve Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs), each in a different part of the country. These FRBs are an undertheorized example of how the federal government uses regional bodies to formulate and administer federal policy. This Essay examines the regional aspect of the FRBs, distinguishing between three types of regionalism: regional policy variation, regional policy formulation, and regional policy implementation. Regional policy variation makes less and less sense in today’s national and interconnected financial system. The trend of shifting decisions from the FRBs to national bodies should be continued. But regional voice and implementation should be retained. The Open Market Committee is critical for incorporating regional perspectives into uniform, national policy, and the FRBs carry out these policies at a regional level in ways that enhance legitimacy, improve efficacy, and promote resiliency.

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Article
v88.6
Federal Corporate Law and the Business of Banking
Lev Menand
Lecturer in Law and Academic Fellow, Columbia Law School.

We thank Dan Awrey, Lucian Bebchuk, Ryan Bubb, Jeff Gordon, David Grewal, Bob Hockett, Howell Jackson, Rob Jackson, Lina Khan, Joshua Macey, Gillian Metzger, Saule Omarova, Ganesh Sitaraman, Joe Sommer, Mike Townsley, Art Wilmarth, and the participants in the 22nd Annual Law & Business Conference at Vanderbilt Law School, the Wharton Financial Regulation Workshop, the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Workshop, and the 11th Labex ReFi-NYU-SAFE/LawFin Law & Banking/Finance Conference for their helpful comments and insights.

Morgan Ricks
Professor of Law and Enterprise Scholar, Vanderbilt University Law School.

It is a bedrock (though still controversial) principle of U.S. business law that corporate formation and governance are the province of state, not federal, law.

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