Supreme Court Means

Campus Report ^ | October 8, 2009 | Sarah Carlsruh

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Supreme Court Means

by: Sarah Carlsruh, October 08, 2009

In honor of the Supreme Court opening its October 2009 term, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted a panel of law experts on October 2nd to discuss the court’s key, upcoming business cases.

“It’s shaping up to be a good term for business cases,” declared John Elwood, a partner at the Washington, D.C. office of Vinson & Elkins. Elwood specializes in appellate and Supreme Court practice.

Elwood claimed that Free Enterprise Fund (FEF) v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) hinges on an issue of separation of powers and government regulation. The PCAOB agency was created out of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which expanded government regulation of corporation management. It has the authorization to do whatever “may be necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors,” according to its website. Ilya Shapiro of The Cato Institute, in a brief of the case, said that “Unlike with an ordinary ‘independent agency,’ the president has no power whatsoever to appoint or remove PCAOB officials,” who can only be removed “for cause” by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to George Mason University law professor Jeremy Rabkin, another panelist, this case is “rather technical and formalistic” but will still get media attention because it will call to mind the style of the Obama Administration; the Obama Administration does inspiring speeches and big media while the “czars” do the “big government” tasks. This case will, said Rabkin, who spoke at Accuracy in Academia’s last author’s night, cause people to ask of the czars: To whom are they accountable?...