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Full-Text Articles in Law
Enron, Titanic, And The Perfect Storm, Nancy B. Rapoport
Enron, Titanic, And The Perfect Storm, Nancy B. Rapoport
Scholarly Works
In this article, I explore the contention of Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron CEO, that Enron's debacle was due to a perfect storm of events. I reject his contention, arguing instead that Enron's downfall was more like Titanic's - hubris and an over-reliance on checks and balances led to Enron's downfall. I then explore how character (especially of those at the top of an organization) can lead to Enron-like disasters, and I talk about how cognitive dissonance can lead to very smart people making very stupid decisions. I end with some musings about how lawyers can learn from Enron.
Lawyers Should Be Lawyers, But What Does That Mean?: A Response To Aiken & Wizner And Smith, Katherine R. Kruse
Lawyers Should Be Lawyers, But What Does That Mean?: A Response To Aiken & Wizner And Smith, Katherine R. Kruse
Scholarly Works
Lawyers should be more like social workers. That is the message of Law as Social Work, the provocative essay by Jane Aiken and Stephen Wizner (Aiken & Wizner) in the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy volume, which preceded the conference on Promoting Justice Through Interdisciplinary Teaching, Practice, and Scholarship, hosted by Washington University School of Law in March 2003. Almost as if in reply, Abbe Smith's contribution to the same pre-conference volume reasserts the importance of lawyers as zealous and partisan advocates, using the realities of the criminal defense context to argue for the value of the lawyer's …
Legal And Ethical Duties Of Lawyers After Sarbanes-Oxley, Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen, Roger C. Cramton
Legal And Ethical Duties Of Lawyers After Sarbanes-Oxley, Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen, Roger C. Cramton
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the legal and ethical duties of lawyers after Sarbanes-Oxley, focusing on the application, interpretation and ambiguities of the SEC rule implementing Section 307. Although our primary frame of reference will be on the SEC's new rules as an aspect of lawyer regulation, those rules are part of federal securities laws and should be considered in that aspect, i.e., whether they advance the purposes of the federal securities laws. The rules affecting lawyers should not be assessed in a vacuum as a mere turf war between federal regulators on the one hand and the organized bar and its …