Academic

With the honest services decisions and the PCAOB decision, (let alone the "foreign cubed" securities case) we can see, contra this good column by Floyd Norris, when courts really get involved with a regulatory scheme.  Late, in many ways.  When you think about the judicial record in relation to the financial crisis - quietude on both the state and federal level during both the merger period and the bailout period - and you think about how long PCAOB has been doing its thing, and how many people have been prosecuted for the government's crazy definition of honest services fraud, you can see just how much of a backstop, rather than proactive participant in the regulatory system, the courts are.  As Lyle Dennison observed in the case concerning the extraterritorial application of our securities laws, "the Court finally took on the issue, after years of declining to review it in a series of cases."  Delayed, rather than immediate participation, defines judicial participation, I think.