Westbrook on the 100th anniversary of the first “blue sky” law

Amy Westbrook has posted “Blue Skies for 100 Years: Introduction to the Special Issue on Corporate and Blue Sky Law” on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Kansas enacted the first state securities law in the United States on March 10, 1911, thereby ushering in a new era of financial regulation. House Bill 906, entitled “An Act to provide for the regulation and supervision of investment companies and providing penalties for the violation thereof” (1911 Act), was the product of disparate forces, including the ongoing struggle over Kansas’ new bank guarantee act, progressive pressures within the Republican Party, strong agricultural markets, the increasing prevalence of traveling securities salesmen, and the work of the charismatic Kansas Commissioner of Banking, Joseph Norman Dolley. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Kansas “blue sky” law, and this issue of the Washburn Law Journal uses the occasion to look back on the genesis of securities regulation and to think about its future. It is true that the financial markets in 2011 are profoundly different from the markets in 1911. Moreover, the 1911 Act was passed under a specific combination of politics, economics, technology and social forces at work in Kansas in 1911. Although a lot has changed in 100 years, the persistence of the regulatory systems established during the early twentieth century, with respect both to securities and to corporate governance more generally, suggests that era may have more to interest us than “mere” history.

SJP