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Yates V. United States: A Case Study In Overcriminalization, Stephen F. Smith
Yates V. United States: A Case Study In Overcriminalization, Stephen F. Smith
Journal Articles
In Yates v. United States, the Supreme Court will decide whether tossing undersized fish overboard can be prosecuted under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, a law aimed at preventing massive frauds of the sort that led to the collapse of Enron and sent shock waves throughout the economy. Although the legal issue is narrow, the case has far-reaching significance. The Yates prosecution is a case study in the dangers posed by “overcriminalization”: the existence of multitudinous, often overlapping criminal laws that are so poorly defined that they sweep within their ambit conduct far afield from their intended target.
The …