Aside from occasional nasty remarks about Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and comments on stock options and innovation, this site does not pay much heed to corporate governance issues.

But, it should be noted, if one is concerned about innovation generally, which is after all what IP is mostly about, then one must view with alarm the tendency to criminalize not just bad actions but mistakes. I wrote on this a decade ago, in The New "Criminal Classes": Legal Sanctions and Business Managers (1997), and since then the situation has deteriorated.

Now, the Heritage Foundation has started a much-needed website to emphasize and track this problem, overcriminalization. Welcome to the web world! Live long and prosper! And corporate officials should check it out -- the time you save instead of serve may be your own.

And while you are at it, check out Walter Olson's fine Overlawyered. The Milberg indictment is not an example of overcriminalization -- it is the proper use of the crimimal law to keep the tort system from being used as an engine of stasis.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:02 PM | Accounting

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