Dana M. Muir

Financial Literacy and Defined Contribution Pensions A Global Snapshot of an Unrecognized Problem

The increasing importance of defined contribution plans, both as employer-provided plans and as mandatory individual accounts, has increased the responsibility placed on workers for making financial decisions. While early on it was assumed that workers would be capable of managing these accounts, studies have documented that many workers make financial mistakes. Financial education has been used as a remedy, but experience has shown that many workers are not interested and others do not follow up on changes they indicate they intend to make. The use of defaults for investments and increased transparency concerning fees are two further developments that have addressed this problem. Now, attention is turning increasingly to financial advice. However, often financial advisers have conflicts of interest that affect the quality and cost of the advice they provide. Some countries are enacting laws that address this issue.

Imagining the Ideal Pension System: International Perspectives

Muir and Turner gather an international roster of pension experts who present what they think would be the ideal pension systems for their countries and why. Those countries include the United States, the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Poland, and Japan.

Justice Sotomayor on the Supreme Court: A Boon for Business?

In this essay, five business law professors with specialties in five different doctrinal areas analyze Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s jurisprudence in those areas and consider the implications of her appointment to the Supreme Court. Each of the areas, intellectual property, antitrust, securities, ERISA, and employment law, involves an area of federal law of significant importance to businesses. Although employment law also is a matter of state law, this essay focuses on the federal employment law statutes. Based on our analysis, we believe that Justice Sotomayor will approach business cases from a neutral perspective. Overall, we find support for the generally accepted view that Justice Sotomayor hews closely to precedent and uses a careful, methodical approach to her legal decisions and case drafting. We also find support, though, in a number of the doctrinal areas that Justice Sotomayor brings a strong sense of fairness and demand for appropriate process. At the same time, there are indications across multiple areas that she is quite deferential to governmental actors, including agency expertise. Finally, her approach to damages also reflects her sense of fairness with examples indicating a tendency to limit damage awards to the amount of loss by plaintiffs.