- Six experts support Coinbase’s SEC battle with an amicus brief, emphasizing investment contract significance.
- Legal scholars assert the ‘investment contract’ definition and request court adherence to established interpretation.
- Affiliated scholars stress amicus intent apart from academic affiliations in support of Coinbase’s case.
A team of six legal experts who specialize in securities law and related domains has presented an amicus brief in support of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase as it navigates its ongoing legal dispute with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
An amicus brief is a formal document filed within a court by a party not directly engaged in the specific case at hand. Typically, it serves to contribute supportive arguments to one side of the lawsuit, underscoring the wider implications the case carries beyond the immediate parties involved.
On August 11, the consortium of legal scholars submitted the amicus brief to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Simultaneously, Senator Cynthia Lummis joined in by submitting her own amicus brief endorsing the cryptocurrency exchange.
The scholars responsible for this submission include a distinguished group of legal minds: Stephen Bainbridge from the University of California, Los Angeles; Tamar Frankel representing Boston University School of Law; Sean Griffith hailing from Fordham University School of Law; Lawrence Hamermesh affiliated with Widener University’s Delaware Law School; Matthew Henderson associated with the University of Chicago Law School; and Jonathan Macey from Yale Law School.
Within their submission, the legal scholars argued that federal precedents and the application of the Howey test recognize that investment contracts inherently involve an expectation of business income, profits, or assets. The collective has formally petitioned the court to uphold the recognized legal characterization of an “investment contract” when interpreting its extent:
“An investor must be promised, by virtue of his or her investment, an ongoing contractual interest in the income, profits, or assets of the enterprise. In this section, we discuss some of these cases.”
amicus brief for coinbase
However, the legal experts made it explicit that their associations with universities or law schools hold no relevance to their engagement with the amicus brief.
