Study

This course provides an introduction to the law and regulation of banks. It places an emphasis on the role that banks play in the American financial system and global economy, underscoring their role in providing safe and equitable access to credit as well as their role as transmitters of systemic risk. The course will discern what exactly banks are and what differentiates them from other kinds of corporations and from other kinds of financial firms. Distinct bank activities, such as lending with access to cheap deposit insurance, expanding the money supply, and providing access to government payments infrastructure, will be discussed and explored. The course also will explore the way in which the banking system is supervised – through examination and monitoring, including an enforcement system largely defined by several overlapping federal and state regulators. The law and regulation of banks will be discussed using three inflecting narratives — (i) the historical, (ii) the economic; and (iii) the doctrinal. The contexts for these narratives are various crises, including the Great Depression, the Savings and Loan Crisis, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2022 failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Regulatory tools -- such as examination, capital rules, living wills, stress tests, concentration limits, antitrust, enhanced prudential supervision, and failed bank resolutions -- will be considered, with an eye towards evaluating their past effectiveness, their ability to provide guardrails for financial stability, and their ability to be useful in dealing with future financial crises. The course will explore the consequences of the current dismantling of the regulatory tools. Finally, the course will discuss the ways in which banking regulatory reform happens in the context of past crises, and what this means for the potential for reform related to the growing interconnectedness of banks with firms such as financial technology companies, crypto currency firms, insurance companies, and government sponsored enterprises.

Special Notes:

4 credits

Fall 2025

Course Number	Course Credits	Evaluation Method	Instructor
304.01	4	Final Exam	Sarah Bloom Raskin
Canvas site: https://canvas.duke.edu/courses/66387