securities
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 401 U.S. 617 - Investment Company Institute v. Camp · 1971Most cited · 1,121 citing opinions
Glass-Steagall Act
the breadth of the term is implicit in the fact that the antecedent statutory language encompasses not only equity securities but also securities representing debt. And certainly there is nothing in the language of these provisions to suggest that the sale of an interest in the business of buying, holding, and selling stocks for investment is to be distinguished from the sale of an interest in a commercial or industrial enterprise.
How the Supreme Court has restated “securities”
Each Supreme Court definition of “securities,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “securities”
Court decisions citing the 4 opinions that defined “securities” — 3,048 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 4 definitions, chronological · 1933–1990
- ORIGINAL
These notes—mere evidence of obligation to pay the purchase price—were not securities within the intendment of the act and were properly regarded as the equivalent of cash.
tax
the class of all written instruments evidencing a financial interest in a business or, alternatively, to a narrower class of capital-raising investment instruments, as opposed to instruments evidencing short-term loans used to fund current expenses.
the note delivered in consumer financing, the note secured by a mortgage on a home, the short-term note secured by a lien on a small business or some of its assets, the note evidencing a 'character' loan to a bank customer, short-term notes secured by an assignment of accounts receivable, or a note which simply formalizes an open-account debt incurred in the ordinary course of business