Evidence of in-play insider trading on a UK betting exchange

International audienceAn open question in market microstructure is whether 'informed' traders have an advantage due to access to private, inside, information; or due to a superior ability to process public information. In this paper we attempt to answer this question with data from a sports betting exchange taken during play. Uniquely, this allows us to time-stamp information events to the nearest second, and to ensure we are observing all relevant information regarding the value of an asset. We find evidence of inside information but not of a superior ability to process public information. The first finding suggests that a subset of the betting population are observing the action before the wider public (possibly due to delays in the television signal), and betting using this informational advantage

Stalking the "Efficient Price" in Market Microstructure Specifications: An Overview

The principle that revisions to the expectation of a security's value should be unforecastable identifies this expectation as a martingale. When price changes can plausibly be assumed covariance stationary, this in turn motivates interest in the random walk. In the presence of the market frictions featured in many microstructure models, however, this expectation does not invariably coincide with observed security prices such as trades and quotes. Accordingly, the random walk becomes an implicit, unobserved component. This paper is an overview of econometric approaches to characterizing this important component in single- and multiple-price applications

The Antiracist Constitution

Our Constitution, as it is and as it has been interpreted by our courts, serves white supremacy. The twin projects of abolition and reconstruction remain incomplete, derailed first by openly hostile institutions, then by the subtler lie that a colorblind Constitution would bring about the end of racism. Yet, in its debut in Supreme Court jurisprudence, colorblind constitutionalism promised that facially discriminatory laws were unnecessary for the perpetuation of white supremacy. That promise has been fulfilled across nearly every field of law as modern white supremacists adopt insidious, facially neutral laws to ensure the oppression of Black people and other vulnerable populations. However, it need not be this way. The Reconstruction Congress gave us the tools in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to apply color-conscious remedies to historic inequities and build an abolition democracy. Previous scholarship has typically focused on the failure to achieve this goal within specific fields of law—criminal justice, education, employment discrimination, and more. Rather than simply analyze the symptoms of racist legal structures, this Article will demonstrate that the patterns across various fields of law reveal the presence of the underlying disease of white supremacy. Even those scholars willing to look to these patterns of oppression have tended to take the pessimistic view that the Constitution is hopelessly infested with white supremacist interpretations. This Article will instead argue that Congress and the courts can, and should, apply the Constitution as it was written and intended—to promote an antiracist vision of America—and will explore what an antiracist Constitution would look like in practice. The resulting framework demonstrates the doctrinal puissance of abolition constitutionalism. Where progressive constitutionalism often struggles to justify the rights-affirming results of the Warren Court and Roe v. Wade while excluding the possibility of a return to the Lochner era, abolition constitutionalism provides a robust basis to support civil rights, including reproductive rights, while rejecting the primacy of freedom of contract

Movement Constitutionalism

The white supremacy at the heart of the American criminal legal system works to control Black, Brown, and poor people through mass incarceration. Poverty and incarceration act in a vicious circle, with reactionaries mounting a desperate defense against any attempt to mitigate economic exploitation or carceral violence. Ending the cycle will require replacing this inequitable system with the life- and liberty-affirming institutions of abolition democracy. The path to abolition democracy is arduous, but abolitionists can press for change through what I coin “movement constitutionalism.” Movement constitutionalism is the process by which grassroots abolitionist movements shift—through demands and in solidarity with each other—our understanding of constitutional theory and structure and, ultimately, democracy. By reshaping the way politicians, judges, and the public view the Constitution, abolitionists can expand the range of viable legislative and litigation remedies for our country’s history of oppression

Saving Justice: Why Sentencing Errors Fall Within the Savings Clause, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e)

Notwithstanding the extent to which scholars, lawyers, and community organizers are broadening their contestations of the criminal justice system, they have paid insufficient attention to federal sentencing regimes. Part of the reason for this is that sentencing is a “back-end” criminal justice problem and much of our nation’s focus on criminal justice issues privileges “front-end” problems like policing. Another explanation might be that the rules governing sentencing are complex and cannot be easily rearticulated in the form of political soundbites. Yet sentencing regimes are a criminal justice domain in which inequalities abound—and in ways that raise profound questions about fairness, due process, and justice. This is particularly true regarding the draconian conditions placed on federal prisoners’ abilities to challenge their unlawful sentences under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. A federal prisoner’s sentence is unlawful when courts—the Supreme Court or a controlling circuit court—wrongly interpret a statute that significantly enhanced the prisoner’s sentencing range. After the person is sentenced and files a direct appeal and initial 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion, the court corrects its errors and determines that correction to be retroactive. The federal prisoner returns to the sentencing court and requests to be sentenced under the correct, unenhanced sentencing range, as the original sentence is no longer authorized by law. There is a deep circuit split regarding whether federal prisoners may seek post-conviction relief for these sentencing claims under the savings clause, 28 U.S.C. § 2255(e)—the procedural vehicle that allows federal prisoners access to the court to challenge an unlawful sentence under the general habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. § 2241. This Article’s significance is twofold. First, because courts have struggled to discern the meaning of the savings clause, this Article provides a text-based interpretation of section 2255(e) that is grounded in the statute’s text and is consistent with its structure and purpose. Second, this Article proposes a doctrinal test that courts should adopt in analyzing sentencing claims brought under the savings clause. Specifically, this Article proposes that relief under the savings clause is appropriate when the claim relies on a retroactively applicable decision of statutory interpretation, the claim was foreclosed by binding precedent at the time of the initial section 2255 motion, and the claim involves a fundamental defect in the sentence. This Article contends that any error that alters the statutory range Congress prescribed for punishment—the ceiling or the floor—raises separation of powers and due process concerns and is thus a fundamental defect in criminal proceedings. In short, federal prisoners should be able to access courts to raise their sentencing claims consistent with this Article’s proposal

White Saviors

It is time for Washington and Lee University to drop both George Washington and Robert E. Lee from the University name. The predominantly White faculty at Washington and Lee recently announced that it will petition the Board of Trustees to remove Lee from the University name. This is the first time in Washington and Lee’s history that the faculty has drafted such a petition. It is worth exploring why the faculty has decided to make a collective statement on Lee now and why the faculty has not included a demand to drop Washington in their petition. The answer is simple—it is no longer acceptable, profitable, or convenient to be associated with Lee but it is for Washington. At least for now

Democratizing Abolition

When abolitionists discuss remedies for past and present injustices, they are frequently met with apparently pragmatic objections to the viability of such bold remedies in U.S. legislatures and courts held captive by reactionary forces. Previous movements have seen their lesser reforms dashed by the white supremacist capitalist order that retains its grip on power in America. While such objectors contend that abolitionists should not ask for so much justice, abolitionists should in fact demand significantly more. Remedying our country’s history of subordination will not be complete without establishing abolition democracy. While our classical conception of a liberal republic asks us to strike a balance between liberty and security—as if more of one requires less of the other—an abolition democracy acknowledges that people are not free if they are insecure in their necessities. Reconstructing American society into this life- and democracy-affirming order will come only with great effort and cooperation. This Article examines the shortcomings of past attempts at liberation and proposes strategies informed by their lessons. This blueprint for such a transformation calls on us to democratize abolition and inject it into all aspects of our society

Reimagining Public Safety

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, abolitionists were repeatedly asked to explain what they meant by “abolish the police”—the idea so seemingly foreign that its literal meaning evaded interviewers. The narrative rapidly turned to the abolitionists’ secondary proposals, as interviewers quickly jettisoned the idea of literally abolishing the police. What the incredulous journalists failed to see was that abolishing police and prisons is not aimed merely at eliminating the collateral consequences of other social ills. Abolitionists seek to build a society in which policing and incarceration are unnecessary. Rather than a society without a means of protecting public safety, abolitionists desire a society where the entire public is safe. That safety requires security in all our material needs, not merely protection from private violence. Abolition democracy challenges us to envision a society where all people have the respect, education, economic resources, civil rights, and franchise necessary to participate fully in all significant aspects of public life—a society in which we are both safe and free. This challenge to our worldview is further compounded by the prevalence of inequality and a culture of violence in American society. In this Article, I meet that challenge with a groundbreaking look at how such a vision requires us to look at public safety not as a zero-sum game between liberty and security, but as a collaborative promotion of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all

The Just Prosecutor

As the most powerful actors in our criminal legal system, prosecutors have been and remain one of the principal drivers of mass incarceration. This was and is by design. Prosecutorial power derives from our constitutional structure--prosecutors are given almost unfettered discretion to determine who to charge, what to charge, and, often, what the sentence will be. Within that structure, the prosecutor\u27s duty is to ensure that justice is done. Yet, in exercising their outsized power, some prosecutors have fully embraced a secondary, adversarial role as a partisan advocate at the significant cost of seeking justice. The necessary reforms of our carceral system must begin with the prosecutor. Our adversarial system of justice so compellingly turns prosecutors away from doing justice to maximizing convictions that it can seem impossible to be both a good person and a good prosecutor. When even progressive prosecutors can be turned into win-seekers rather than neutral agents of justice, Blackness is punished. Black people are disproportionally arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for longer than the population overall. Rejecting adversarialism is therefore essential, but that alone will not be enough--in order to act in the interest of justice, a prosecutor must consciously replace adversarialism as a guiding ideology. This Article imagines prosecutors as solely just actors in our criminal legal system. The prosecutor\u27s function as a minister of justice remains underexamined and undertheorized. So, what is a just prosecutor? My thesis is that abolition constitutionalism, critical originalism, and the liberation justice of hip-hop and the Movement for Black Lives can be used in constructing a prosecutor that improves the ideology and administration of justice in the United States. Abolition constitutionalism demands that prosecutors advance civil liberties, equal protection, and due process rights for criminal defendants throughout the entire criminal process. For example, prosecutors should provide Brady exculpatory material to defendants prior to entering any plea agreements and join a prisoner\u27s postconviction motion when they are actually innocent of the underlying crime. Critical originalism confirms that the criminalization of the use of drugs was driven by racial considerations and requires that prosecutors leverage statutes, such as the Speedy Trial Act, to create robust diversion programs for non-violent drug offenders. And prosecutors that understand liberation justice appreciate that our system was designed to target and imprison Black and Brown people. Because of this profound unfairness, prosecutors must become movement lawyers who work to dismantle white supremacy through decriminalization of drug offenses, prosecutorial nullification, expungement motions, and the elimination of cash bail. There is much common ground in these seemingly disparate threads of theory, where justice is painted--not in definitional words, but in concrete actions--for prosecutors

Movement Judges

Judges matter. The opinions of a few impact the lives of many. Judges romanticize their own impartiality, but apathy in the face of systems of oppression favors the status quo and clears the way for conservative agendas to take root. The lifetime appointments of federal judges, the deliberate weaponization of the bench by reactionary opponents of the New Deal and progressive social movements, and the sheer inertia of judicial self-restraint have led to the conservative capture of the courts. By contrast, empathy for the oppressed and downtrodden renders substantive justice possible and leaves room for unsuccessful litigants to accept unfavorable outcomes. But some judges—movement judges—bring more to the bench than just empathy, raging against systemic injustice with an understanding of its burdens on real human lives. This Article argues that we need movement judges to realize the abolitionist and democracy-affirming potential of the Constitution. Although the judiciary is often described as the “least democratic” of the three branches of government, it has the potential to be the most democratic. With movement judges, the judiciary can become a force for “We the People.