Corporate Compliance & Regulatory Enforcement

3 units

How do companies translate their legal obligations into rules for their employees? How do they ensure that they follow both the letter and spirit of the laws? What can lawmakers and regulators do to encourage companies to stay on the right path? These are the core questions of corporate compliance and the focus of this class. This class will provide students with a framework for thinking about compliance and regulatory enforcement, one that is useful for almost any eventual area of practice. In particular, the course will cover how Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission evaluate companies' compliance programs, study specific compliance scandals to show how companies (and also regulators) go astray of their legal obligations, and analyze a selection of substantive laws for the kinds of loopholes and unintended consequences that complicate compliance efforts. In addition to reading from a casebook, this class will rely on case studies of recent compliance failures and in-class exercises to illustrate the legal and ethical problems that face today's corporations. Grades will be based on class participation, several short assignments and in-class exercises, and a final exam. Electronic devices will not be permitted.