OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES (Yale Press, 2014)
In the wake of the financial meltdown in 2008, there were many who claimed it had been inevitable, that “no one saw it coming,” and that subprime borrowers were to blame. This accessible, thoroughly researched book is Jennifer Taub’s response to such unfounded claims. Drawing on wide-ranging experience as a corporate lawyer, investment firm counsel, and scholar of business law and financial market regulation, Taub chronicles how government officials helped bankers inflate the toxic mortgage backed housing bubble, then after the bubble burst ignored the plight of millions of homeowners suddenly facing foreclosure.
Focusing new light on the similarities between the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s and the Financial Crisis in 2008, Taub reveals that in both cases the same reckless banks, operating under different names, failed again, while the same lax regulators overlooked fraud and abuse. Furthermore, in 2014, as the legal problems plaguing JPMorgan Chase demonstrate, the situation is essentially unchanged. The author asserts that the 2008 Crisis was not just similar to the S&L scandal, it was a severe relapse of the same underlying disease. And despite modest regulatory reforms, the disease remains uncured: top banks remain too big to manage, too big to regulate, and too big to fail.
CORPORATE AND WHITE COLLAR CRIME: CASES AND MATERIALS (Wolters Kluwer, 2017)
This casebook endeavors to provide a theoretical and policy framework for systematically examining the principal federal statutes that prosecutors regularly invoke in corporate and white collar crime cases. In addition to relying on reported judicial decisions as vehicles for discussion, the book uses problems, case studies, and other similar materials to illustrate the context within which the issues are framed. The sixth edition includes landmark decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate courts through 2016. New judicial decisions include United States v. Newman (Insider Trading); Yates v. United States (Sarbanes-Oxley); McDonnell v. United States (Bribery of Public Officials); and RJR v. European Commission (RICO).
It is with great honor and trepidation that I endeavor to carry forward Kathleen Brickey’s work, beginning with this sixth edition. Brickey was a pioneer in the field of corporate and white collar criminal law. Beginning in 1984 with her multi-volume treatise “Corporate Criminal Liability,” she cleared a path for many scholars to follow. One of her most generous contributions is this casebook.