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21 Bus. Law. 337 (1965-1966)
Professionalism and the Stockbroker

handle is hein.journals/busl21 and id is 341 raw text is: January 1966 337 PROFESSIONALISM AND THE STOCKBROKER* Some Observations on the SEC Special Study by EZRA G. LEVIN** and WILLIAM M. EVAN*** New York City Cambridge, Mass. The complexities of modern industrial society have rendered in- creasingly more difficult the task of the lawyer in adjudicating actual or potential conflicts and in articulating the guidelines for their orderly resolution. The securities industry is an exemplar of these complexities, which are abundantly documented in the Report of Special Study of Securities Markets of the Securities and Exchange Commission'-referred to hereinafter as the Special Study. The in- dustry may be viewed as a social system with a complex structure of individual interrelationships, a complex network of interacting organ- izations, and a complex system of rules (legal norms) derived from common law, statutory law, administrative regulations and private legal systems.2 The point of departure of this paper is an assumption that, in ad- dition to the standard legal methods of analysis, the methods and con- cepts of the social sciences, especially sociology, may be helpful in illuminating complex legal and social phenomena.3 The observations which follow have been prompted by some aspects of the Special Study. To some sophisticated securities lawyers, these observations may seem to belabor of the obvious, albeit in unfamiliar terms. Yet the sources even of recurrent problems in the securities industry are not all readily recognizable, and guidelines for their resolution are by no means entirely obvious, either. If the application of different concepts *Revised from a paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociolog- ical Association at Los Angeles, California, August, 1963. **Member of the New York Bar. ***Associate Professor of Sociology and Management, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1. H. R. Doc. No. 95, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Pts. 1-5 (1963). 2. Cf. Evan, Public and Private Legal Systems, in LAW AND SOCIOLOGY 165-184 (Evan. ed. 1962). 3. For a somewhat contrary view as to the feasibility of fruitful research in the sociology of law, cf. Riesman, Law and Sociology: Recruitments, Train- ing and Colleagueship, in LAW AND SOCIOLOGY 14 (Evan ed. 1962) : ... soci- ology is not now prepared to embrace the legal order within its own categories in terms sufficiently detailed and concrete to shed new illumination. There is not only a certain intellectual impenetrability about the law, reflecting and resulting from the achievements of generations of jurists; there is an even more important factual impenetrability resulting from the sheer overwhelming and opaque bulk of data that must be mastered to link the empirical with the interpretive or the ideal-typical. Riesman concludes that at present only an occupational approach is feasible in the sociology of law, by which he means a sociological study of lawyers and, by implication, of other personnel of the legal system. Cf. discussion note 69 infra and accompanying text.

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