Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Appeal And Limits Of Internal Controls To Fight Fraud, Terrorism, Other Ills, Lawrence A. Cunningham
The Appeal And Limits Of Internal Controls To Fight Fraud, Terrorism, Other Ills, Lawrence A. Cunningham
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Congress responded in similar ways to 2001's major national crises: bolstering internal controls in corporate America under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in response to Enron's debacle and imposing internal controls on its financial services industry under the USA PATRIOT Act in response to 9/11's terrorism. These reflexive legislative responses to national crisis fit a pattern of proliferating controls as a first-order policy option dating to the mid-1970s. Documenting this proliferation and untangling the definition of internal controls, this Article attributes the appeal of internal controls as a policy option to systemic forces including the movements for deregulation and cooperative compliance, resistance …