Drafters hid securities within ‘services, rights and interests’ to bypass SEC oversight.

Evidence

Philip McBride Johnson, who in 1974 was Counsel to the Chicago Board of Trade, and who later chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said that this broad, apparently vague phrasing was deliberate: “To have offered the word securities' would have set off alarms through the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], which was at best a casual observer through most of the legislative process. Instead we offered a definition of 'commodity' that would include the phrase services, rights and interests,’ believing one or more of those words would capture securities (to which the courts have subsequently agreed). This seemingly benign phrase was readily adopted.” — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 764

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to legal-jurisdiction literature and the performativity theme: legal language engineered to shape market structure. — connects to: Drafters concealed sweeping powers behind innocuous-sounding definitions. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 776