Judges Commons^™

The Sec's Shift To Administrative Proceedings: An Empirical Assessment, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen Choi

Law & Economics Working Papers

Congress has repeatedly expanded the authority of the SEC to pursue violations of the securities laws in proceedings decided by its own administrative law judges, most recently in the Dodd Frank Act. We report the results from an empirical study of SEC enforcement actions against non-financial public companies to assess the impact of the Dodd Frank Act on the balance between SEC district court and administrative enforcement actions. We show a general decline in the number of court actions against public companies post Dodd Frank. At the same time, we show an increase in average civil penalties post-Dodd Frank for …