法律翻译 | 《纽约大学法律评论》第94卷第5期、第95卷第5期

原文链接：https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-94-number-5/engineered-credit-default-swaps-innovative-or-manipulative/

Credit default swaps (CDS) are, once again, making waves. Maligned for their role in the 2008 financial crisis and condemned by the Vatican, investors are once more utilizing CDS to achieve results of questionable market benefit. A CDS is a financial contract that allows investors to “bet” on whether a borrower will default on its loan. However, rather than waiting to see how their bets pan out, some CDS counterparties are collaborating with financially distressed borrowers to guarantee the profitability of their CDS positions—“engineering” the CDS’ outcome. Under the CDS contract, these collaborations are not prohibited, yet they have roiled the CDS market, leading some market participants to view the collaborations as a sign that CDS are little more than a rigged game. Conversely, some view “engineered CDS transactions” as an innovative form of financing for distressed companies. As engineered CDS transactions proliferate in the market, it becomes increasingly prudent to look beyond their contractual acceptability to assess whether, from a legal point of view, these transactions are permissible. 

信用违约互换（CDS）再一次掀起浪潮。投资者因为在2008年金融危机中的作用而受到抨击，并遭致梵蒂冈的谴责，而这次再一次利用CDS获得了值得怀疑的市场利益。信用违约互换是一种允许投资者“打赌”借款人是否会拖欠其贷款的金融合同。然而，一些CDS交易方并非坐以待毙，而是与陷入财务困境的借款者合作，以保证其CDS头寸的盈利能力——“操纵”CDS的结果。在CDS合同下，这些合作未被禁止，却扰乱了CDS的市场，导致一些市场参与者因这些合作认为CDS只不过是一种被操纵的游戏。与此相对，一些人认为“操纵CDS交易”是困境中的公司融资的一种创新方式。由于市场上操纵CDS交易行为的激增，人们愈发谨慎地超越合同上的可接受性而从法律角度评估这些交易是否能够被允许。

Engineered CDS transactions demonstrate the challenges that the existing legal and non-legal framework face in effectively responding to new forms of market distortion. This Article examines the costs and benefits of engineered CDS transactions on the market as a precursor to determining whether legal intervention is needed. Assessment of the relative costs and benefits of engineered transactions indicates that despite their innovativeness, engineered CDS transactions are largely detrimental to the markets because they impose costs on actors unaffiliated with the CDS market and, more broadly, destroy public trust in the financial markets. Yet, despite their associated harms, legally, engineered transactions exist in a gray space. This Article analyzes the phenomenon of engineered CDS transactions, assessing the capacity of applicable legal frameworks, private standards, and market discipline to address these transactions, and finds each to be lacking. Consequently, this Article proposes a range of responses, including modernization of the existing anti-manipulation framework, to mitigate the harm and collateral consequences that stem from engineered CDS transactions.

操纵CDS交易表明了现存的法律和非法律框架在有效应对新形式下市场扭曲所面临的挑战。本文评估了操纵CDS交易对市场的成本和收益，作为确定是否需要法律干预的前奏。对操纵交易相关的成本及收益的评估表明，即使操纵交易具有创新性，在很大程度上仍对市场有害，因为这些交易给与CDS无关的行为人带来了成本，更广泛来看，这破坏了公众对金融市场的信任。然而，尽管具有相关危害，就法律层面而言，操纵交易仍处于灰色地带。本文分析了操纵CDS交易的现象，评估了可应用的法律框架、私人标准以及市场纪律处理这些交易的能力，并且发现每一种都是缺乏的。因此，本文提出了一系列应对措施，包括更新现有的反操纵框架，以减轻操纵CDS交易所带来的危害和附带后果。

作者：Deborah Tuerkheimer

#MeToo运动引领了一种新的对性不端行为的指控——通过非正式交流渠道提出指控。一项功能分析表明，非正式的指控可以促进重要目的的实现。但是，非正式指控的兴起应当引起法律学者和律师的特别关注，他们通常从某些关于正式问责制度的首要地位的假设出发。如果非正式的指控渠道旨在实现法律以及法律机构无法实现的目标，以成为那些垄断学术界关注的官方批准的问责机制的替代品，那么这些基础假设就需要得到修正。非正式的指控途径是对不完善法律的变通办法；它们的普遍存在意味着关于性不端行为的法律已经处于相对静止的状态。随着时间的推移，长期受到刑法、校园纪律程序和工作场所投诉机制伤害的幸存者们，大多已经拒绝了抛弃他们的制度。对官方指控渠道进行必要重构时，应考虑到非正式指控的优势，同时致力于唤醒法律。

作者：Khiara M. Bridges

Racial disparities in maternal mortality have recently become a popular topic, with a host of media outlets devoting time and space to covering the appalling state of black maternal health in the country. Congress responded to this increased societal awareness by passing the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act at the tail end of 2018. The law provides states twelve million dollars annually, for five years, to fund maternal mortality review commissions—interdisciplinary collections of experts that evaluate and investigate the causes of every maternal death in a jurisdiction. Fascinatingly, although activists, journalists, politicians, scholars, and other commentators understand that the maternal health tragedy in the United States is a racial tragedy, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act completely ignores race. Indeed, the term “race” does not appear anywhere in the text of the statute. The irony is striking: An effort to address a phenomenon that has become salient because of its racial nature ignores race entirely.

孕产妇死亡率的种族差异性最近已成为一个热门话题，许多媒体花费了时间和版面来报道国内黑人孕产妇健康的糟糕状况。为回应这一不断增强的社会意识，国会于2018年底通过了《防止孕产妇死亡法案》。该法给各州每年度拨款1200万美元，为期五年，以资助孕产妇死亡评估委员会——集合跨学科领域的各专家以评估和调查本辖区内孕产妇的死因。有趣的是，尽管活动家、记者、政治家、学者以及其他评论家都明白这一关于美国孕产妇的健康悲剧是种族性灾难，但是《防止孕产妇死亡法案》完全忽视了种族问题。的确，“种族”一词并未出现在该法律文本的任何地方。这种讽刺是惊人的，其致力于解决因种族性质而变得突出的问题，却完全忽视了种族。

The racial irony embodied by the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act serves as an invitation to investigate not only the Act itself, but the national conversation that is currently taking place about racial disparities in maternal deaths. Indeed, in important respects, if the general discourse that surrounds racial disparities in maternal mortality is impoverished, then we should expect that the solutions that observers propose will be impoverished as well. This is precisely what this Article discovers. The analysis proceeds in four Parts.

该法案展现的讽刺意味不但要求调查法案本身，而且要求调查目前正在进行的关于在孕产妇死亡率中存在种族差异性的全国性讨论。实际上，在一些重要方面，如果围绕孕产妇死亡率中的种族差异性的一般性讨论是贫乏的，那么我们能够预知观察者提出的解决方案也将是贫乏的。这正是本文的发现。本文的分析分四个部分进行。

Part I provides an overview of racial disparities in maternal mortality, identifying the various elements that have made pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period much more dangerous for black women than their white counterparts in the United States. Part II then offers critiques of the national conversation around racial disparities in maternal mortality and warns of both the marginalizing effects it may have on black women and the possibility that it will lead to blaming black women for dying on the path to motherhood.

第一部分概述了孕产妇死亡率中的种族差异，指出了导致美国黑人妇女在怀孕、分娩和产后阶段比白人妇女更危险的各种因素。第二部分对孕产妇死亡率中的种族差异性的全国性讨论提出了批评，并警告其可能对黑人妇女产生的边缘化影响，以及其可能导致指责黑人妇女死于成为母亲的道路上。

Part III describes the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act in some detail. Part IV follows with a critique of the Act, identifying three deficiencies. First, it notes the racial erasure contained in the Act—the fact that the Act nowhere mentions the racial dimensions of the nation’s maternal health debacle. It then observes the predicament created by the fact that erasing race likely was essential to the very passage of the Act. , it leaves space for maternal mortality review commissions to simply blame the dead for dying. Second, it notes that because the Act does not direct the state maternal mortality review commissions to investigate the structural and institutional forces that produce excess maternal deaths in the United States, it leaves space for maternal mortality review commissions to simply blame the dead for dying.Third, it notes that the Act does no more than fund the gathering of more data about pregnancy-related deaths. However, it observes that there is a strong argument to be made that we do not need more data. We already know why women are dying, and we already know how to save them. In this way, the tragedy of maternal mortality in the United States is not a problem of information; it is a problem of political will. To the extent that Congress chose to intervene in the maternal health debacle not with policy changes, but rather with an attestation that we need more information, the Preventing Maternal Deaths Act demonstrates that we still lack the political will to make the concrete changes that will make pregnancy and childbirth safe.

第三部分详细地介绍了《防止孕产妇死亡法案》，随后第四部分对该法案进行了批判并指出了三个缺陷。首先，本部分指出该法案中的“种族抹除”（racial erasure）——该法案没有一处在种族维度上提及这个国家孕产妇健康的崩溃问题。接着，本部分注意到这样一个事实造成的困境，即抹去种族在很大可能上是法案通过的必要之处。其次，本部分指出因为该法案并未指示州孕产妇死亡率评估委员会调查导致在美孕产妇死亡的结构性和制度性的驱动力，这为孕产妇死亡率评估委员会只是单纯将其归咎于死者本身留下了空间。再者，本部分注意到，该法案只是资助收集更多的与怀孕相关的死亡数据。然而，本部分观察到一个强有力的论点是，我们并不需要更多的数据。我们已经知晓妇女死亡的原因，我们也已经知晓如何救助她们。因此，关于在美孕产妇死亡率的悲剧并非信息问题，而是政治意愿问题。国会选择干预孕产妇健康的崩溃问题并非政策之转变，而是用以证明我们需要更多的信息。在这一层面上，《防止孕产妇死亡法案》表明我们仍然缺乏政治意愿来作出切实的改变以保证怀孕和分娩的安全。

作者：Lee Kovarsky

原文链接：https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-95-number-5/delay-in-the-shadow-of-death/

There is a widely held belief that, in order to delay executions, American death-row prisoners strategically defer litigation until the eleventh hour. After all, the logic goes, the incentives for prisoners who face the death penalty differ from those who do not. Noncapital prisoners typically try to move the terminal point of a sentence (release) forward, and capital prisoners typically try to push that point (execution) back. This theory of litigant behavior—what I call the “Strategic Delay Account,” or the “SDA”—underwrites an extraordinarily harsh institutional response. It primes courts to discount real constitutional grievances and to punish participating lawyers, and it spurs legislatures to restrict crucial remedies.

人们普遍认为，为了推迟执行处决，美国的死刑犯会策略性地将诉讼推迟直至最后一刻。毕竟，从逻辑来说，面临死刑的囚犯的动机与无需面临死刑的囚犯不同。非死刑犯通常会试图将刑罚的终点（释放）提前，而死刑犯会试图将其终点（执行）延后。这种关于诉讼行为的理论——我称之为“策略性延迟理由”或者“SDA”——导致了一种极为严苛的制度性回应。它迫使法院忽视真正的宪法冤情并惩罚参与诉讼的律师，它还刺激立法机关限制关键的救济措施。

In this Article, I explain that the SDA inaccurately describes condemned prisoner behavior, both because it assumes a non-existent incentive structure and because it ignores the major structural causes of delayed litigation. First, deferred litigation is risky, and fortune disfavors the bold. Procedural doctrines that operate across post-conviction law strongly incentivize the promptest conceivable presentation of claims. Second, prisoners often omit challenges from early rounds of litigation not because they have done so strategically, but instead because some claims are inherently incapable of being asserted at that time. Third, the volume of end-stage litigation reflects the comprehensive failure of American jurisdictions to provide adequate legal services; condemned prisoners are often functionally unrepresented from the moment early-stage proceedings conclude until the state sets an execution date.