GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works Faculty Scholarship 2003 The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And it Might Just Work) Lawrence A. Cunningham George Washington University Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.gwu.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Lawrence A. Cunningham, The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And it Might Just Work), 35 Conn. L. Rev. 915 (2003). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And It Might Just Work) Lawrence A. Cunningham Boston College Law School [Please cite as forthcoming 36 U. Conn. L. Rev. (2003)] Draft: October 2002 This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network: http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=337280 1 The Sarbanes-Oxley Yawn: Heavy Rhetoric, Light Reform (And It Might Just Work) Lawrence A. Cunningham∗ [Please cite as forthcoming 36 U. Conn. L. Rev. (2003)] [Preliminary Draft; Comments Sought] Facing a series of accounting and corporate governance scandals from Enron Corp. to WorldCom Inc. at the dawn of the new millennium, Congress possessed that rare political and institutional capacity to address deep causes and systemic dysfunction.1 Congress used this episodic power opportunity to enact the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.2 On signing it, conservative Republican President George W.