UIC School of Law UIC Law Open Access Repository UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2005 How Sarbanes-Oxley Should be Used to Expose the Secrets of Discretion, Judgment, and Materiality of the Auditor's Report, 4 DePaul Bus. & Comm. L.J. 1 (2005) Arthur Acevedo John Marshall Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.uic.edu/facpubs Part of the Accounting Law Commons Recommended Citation Arthur Acevedo, How Sarbanes-Oxley Should be Used to Expose the Secrets of Discretion, Judgment, and Materiality of the Auditor's Report, 4 DePaul Bus. & Comm. L.J. 1 (2005) https://repository.law.uic.edu/facpubs/398 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UIC Law Open Access Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of UIC Law Open Access Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. How Sarbanes-Oxley Should be Used to Expose the Secrets of Discretion, Judgment, and Materiality of the Auditor's Report Arthur Acevedo I. INTRODUCTION For many individuals, the auditor's report symbolizes the hallmark of professional integrity, independence and due care.1 However, the public's trust and confidence in the auditor's report came to a crashing halt when a wave of financial scandals plagued the American land- scape during 2001 and 2002. Public trust in the auditor and the audi- tor's report quickly eroded as company after company announced corrections of restatements of earlier audited financial statements. Responding to this breach of public trust by the audit profession, Congress passed the Sarbanes Oxley-Act ("SOA").