Collateral Damage: When Should the Determinations of Administrative Adjudications Have Collateral Estoppel Effect in Subsequent Adjudications?

Collateral estoppel is an equitable doctrine under which a court gives issue-preclusive effect to findings of fact or law made in previous proceedings. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently held that under certain circumstances, the determinations of administrative adjudications have collateral estoppel effect in federal court. The Court, however, did not address under which circumstances the determinations of administrative adjudications should have collateral estoppel effect in subsequent administrative adjudications. There has been little clear and consistent reasoning in lower federal courts about when collateral estoppel should apply in administrative adjudications, and administrative agencies vary widely in their application of collateral estoppel when conducting adjudications. This Note argues that neither the balancing test used to apply collateral estoppel in federal court nor the more formalistic per se rules proposed by some commentators are appropriate when applying collateral estoppel between administrative adjudications. Instead, courts should defer to agencies, granting them wide discretion to recognize or not recognize the collateral estoppel effect of prior administrative adjudications

Thc Equitable Procedure Amendment Act 1862 No. 18

An Act to amend the practice and proceedings on the Equitable Side of the Supreme Court. W. rep., 20/1866-7, s. 3Digitising of this publication was funded by a grant from the Law Foundation of South Australia, Incorporated

When Can Matrix Query Languages Discern Matrices?

We investigate when two graphs, represented by their adjacency matrices, can be distinguished by means of sentences formed in MATLANG, a matrix query language which supports a number of elementary linear algebra operators. When undirected graphs are concerned, and hence the adjacency matrices are real and symmetric, precise characterisations are in place when two graphs (i.e., their adjacency matrices) can be distinguished. Turning to directed graphs, one has to deal with asymmetric adjacency matrices. This complicates matters. Indeed, it requires to understand the more general problem of when two arbitrary matrices can be distinguished in MATLANG. We provide characterisations of the distinguishing power of MATLANG on real and complex matrices, and on adjacency matrices of directed graphs in particular. The proof techniques are a combination of insights from the symmetric matrix case and results from linear algebra and linear control theory

Graph Spectral Properties of Deterministic Finite Automata

We prove that a minimal automaton has a minimal adjacency matrix rank and a minimal adjacency matrix nullity using equitable partition (from graph spectra theory) and Nerode partition (from automata theory). This result naturally introduces the notion of matrix rank into a regular language L, the minimal adjacency matrix rank of a deterministic automaton that recognises L. We then define and focus on rank-one languages: the class of languages for which the rank of minimal automaton is one. We also define the expanded canonical automaton of a rank-one language.Comment: This paper has been accepted at the following conference: 18th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory (DLT 2014), August 26 - 29, 2014, Ekaterinburg, Russi

Communication Complexity of Cake Cutting

We study classic cake-cutting problems, but in discrete models rather than using infinite-precision real values, specifically, focusing on their communication complexity. Using general discrete simulations of classical infinite-precision protocols (Robertson-Webb and moving-knife), we roughly partition the various fair-allocation problems into 3 classes: "easy" (constant number of rounds of logarithmic many bits), "medium" (poly-logarithmic total communication), and "hard". Our main technical result concerns two of the "medium" problems (perfect allocation for 2 players and equitable allocation for any number of players) which we prove are not in the "easy" class. Our main open problem is to separate the "hard" from the "medium" classes.Comment: Added efficient communication protocol for the monotone crossing proble

Saving Disgorgement from Itself: SEC Enforcement After Kokesh v. SEC

Disgorgement is under threat. In Kokesh v. SEC , the Supreme Court held that disgorgement—a routine remedy that allows the SEC to recoup ill-gotten gains from financial wrongdoers—is subject to a 5-year statute of limitations because it functions as a “penalty.” This ruling threatens to upend the traditional conception of disgorgement as an ancillary remedy granted by the court’s equity power, because there are no penalties at equity. With the possibility that Kokesh’s penalty reasoning could be adopted beyond the statute of limitations context, the future of disgorgement in federal court is in doubt. This Note proposes a way forward that allows for disgorgement’s continued viability. The SEC should moderate its use of disgorgement for three reasons: because of a trend of suspicion toward strong government enforcement power by the Supreme Court, because it has been improperly used punitively, and because the rise of other statutory schemes has displaced disgorgement’s original justification. At the same time, disgorgement should be saved because of the uncertain future of administrative disgorgement proceedings, the intuitive notion of recovering money from wrongdoers, and the much-needed ability to compensate victims. To save disgorgement, the SEC should limit its use only to restoring the status quo of injured investors, thereby ensuring a remedial—not penal—purpose

Bankrupt Estoppel: The Case for a Uniform Doctrine of Judicial Estoppel as Applied Against Former Bankruptcy Debtors

This Note examines the role judicial estoppel plays in supporting the U.S. federal bankruptcy regime. Though once considered an obscure doctrine, the use of judicial estoppel to bar pursuit of previously undisclosed claims by former bankrupts has grown apace with burgeoning bankruptcy filings over the last decade. While the doctrine’s application in federal courts has evolved toward a common standard of application, state courts’ application remains idiosyncratic. The Note argues that under the established laws of judgment recognition and in light of federal courts’ sophisticated application of the doctrine, state courts should apply federal judicial estoppel standards to further national uniformity in bankruptcy practice

Saving Disgorgement from Itself: SEC Enforcement After Kokesh v. SEC

Disgorgement is under threat. In Kokesh v. SEC , the Supreme Court held that disgorgement—a routine remedy that allows the SEC to recoup ill-gotten gains from financial wrongdoers—is subject to a 5-year statute of limitations because it functions as a “penalty.” This ruling threatens to upend the traditional conception of disgorgement as an ancillary remedy granted by the court’s equity power, because there are no penalties at equity. With the possibility that Kokesh’s penalty reasoning could be adopted beyond the statute of limitations context, the future of disgorgement in federal court is in doubt. This Note proposes a way forward that allows for disgorgement’s continued viability. The SEC should moderate its use of disgorgement for three reasons: because of a trend of suspicion toward strong government enforcement power by the Supreme Court, because it has been improperly used punitively, and because the rise of other statutory schemes has displaced disgorgement’s original justification. At the same time, disgorgement should be saved because of the uncertain future of administrative disgorgement proceedings, the intuitive notion of recovering money from wrongdoers, and the much-needed ability to compensate victims. To save disgorgement, the SEC should limit its use only to restoring the status quo of injured investors, thereby ensuring a remedial—not penal—purpose