KU Law professor’s article selected as a Top 10 Corporate and Securities Article of 2024

LAWRENCE – Alex Platt, University of Kansas professor of law, has received one of the highest honors in the field of corporate and securities law. His article, “The Administrative Origins of Mandatory Disclosure,” was selected as one of the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Articles of 2024 by the Corporate Practice Commentator.

The selection reflects votes of all business law faculty in the U.S., who picked from a list of over 300 corporate and securities law papers published during 2024. The selection of Platt’s article, published in The Journal of Corporation Law, marks the first time in the 31-year history of the annual poll that a KU Law professor has been selected for this list.

“I am just thrilled,” Platt said. “It’s a terrific honor. I’m grateful to Dean Mazza and my KU Law colleagues for all their support.”

In his paper, Platt uncovers what he calls the “lost history” of the mandatory disclosure system that governs publicly traded companies. Where conventional accounts focus on the drafting and enactment of landmark securities law statutes by the elite lawyers surrounding FDR, Platt's “revisionist history” looks past the law on the books to the details of how the system was actually implemented. He describes it as “a story of how creative and resourceful administration by an ordinary mid-level official transformed – and likely redeemed – one of the foundational regulatory programs of the modern administrative state.”

Platt’s project relied on extensive archival research of primary source materials gathered from the Roosevelt Presidential Library, the Harvard Law Library and elsewhere and was also supported in part by the KU New Faculty Research Development Award. Platt said the paper benefited enormously from feedback he received over several years at workshops and conferences around the country from legal academics, historians and practitioners.

Platt joined the KU faculty in 2020 and was recently promoted to full professor with tenure. His research has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, cited by SEC commissioners and published in the Stanford Law Review. He teaches Contracts, Securities Regulation and Business Organizations.