Prosecutorial Deference to Symbolic Structures of Compliance: Legal Endogeneity in Corporate Prosecution

• In Event: How Do Prosecutors Decide? Socioeconomic Factors, Race, and Prior Records

Abstract

Lax enforcement of corporate crime has persisted to the extent that the U.S. is experiencing a “crisis of underenforcement”. However, there has been insufficient social scientific examination of how corporate crime is prosecuted and punished in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Meanwhile, the scholarly community around corporate offending has not substantially integrated Law and Organization theories into the investigation of law enforcement’s criminal management of corporate misbehavior. This study examines post-financial crisis corporate prosecution through the lens of legal endogeneity. It uses content analysis of case dockets and official documents to investigate the way in which federal prosecutors defer to symbolic structures of compliance in criminal enforcement against corporate malfeasances. This research argues that the processes by which formal legal institutions rely on regulated organizations (corporations) to construct the meaning of compliance in legislative and administrative proceedings, as set forth by legal endogeneity theory, are also applicable to corporate prosecution.

Author

• Li Huang, University of California, Irvine