About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

76 St. John's L. Rev. 897 (2002)
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Federalizing Norms for Officer, Lawyer, and Accountant Behavior

handle is hein.journals/stjohn76 and id is 907 raw text is: THE SARBANES-OXLEY ACT: FEDERALIZING NORMS FOR OFFICER, LAWYER, AND ACCOUNTANT BEHAVIOR LARRY CATA/ BACKERt INTRODUCTION In response to a number of corporate scandals, the federal government enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (the Act). The Act creates a framework of government oversight of the accounting profession and its practices, imposes a number of certification requirements on corporate officers, restricts a number of corporate practices involving trading of securities by and loans to corporate officers, imposes reporting duties on lawyers, and provides protection for employees who disclose violations of law perpetrated by corporate officers and directors. This Article explores some of the changes made by the Act in a practice context. The Article focuses on the manner in which the Act might affect corporate behavior in a number of common business situations involving: people considering the offer of a position as a corporate officer; accounting firms seeking to perform audit and other functions for a corporate client; officers seeking loans from their employer corporation, including advances of fees pursuant to indemnification agreements; corporations facing adoption of financial codes of ethics; lawyers seeking guidance on the situations in which they are now required to report evidence of corporate wrongdoing; implementing internal accounting and disclosure systems and disclosing wrongdoing; people seeking guidance on the protection t Professor of Law, Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law, <lcbll@psu.edu>. My thanks to all of the participants at the Symposium: Enron and Its Aftermath, St. John's University School of Law, Jamaica, New York (Sept. 20, 2002), where the materials in this Article were presented. Special thanks to Jayne Barnard, F. Jay Mootz and Cheryl Wade for their comments on earlier versions of this Article. My research assistant, Bryan Ackerman (Penn State '03), provided outstanding work on this Article.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most