Legal News

High Court to Weigh Sarb-Ox; Conrad Black Conviction

By Ashby Jones

Well, that only took about seven years. The Supreme Court on Monday decided to review the constitutionality the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law, passed in the wake of the accounting scandals of the early part of the decade. The key question in the case is whether the Act violated the separation-of-powers doctrine in the way it provided for the selection and removal of members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. Click here for that report, from Scotusblog.

The Supreme Court on Monday also agreed to consider the conviction of newspaper magnate Conrad Black, who was convicted in 2007 on three counts of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice in relation to $5.5 million payments they received from Hollinger International subsidiary. Black is currently serving a 6 1/2 year prison term.

Black had argued that he didn’t commit fraud because the payments did no harm to the company. The Seventh Circuit upheld the convictions, but there’s apparently a circuit split over central issue undergirding their convictions.

So what’s Black been doing with all that free time on his hands? Well, among whatever duties they have him doing, he’s been churning out pieces for Tina Brown’s Daily Beast. Click here for a piece from April titled, simply, “I Was Right”; here for another on Chicago’s Eddie Genson; here for all of Mr. Black’s work.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 18, 2009 (boomark / email).