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Does 'Cooperation' Obscure the Truth?

By Tai H. Park
June 02, 2004

Nowadays more than ever, accusations of business crime must be put to the test, since the stakes in this post-Enron era are at an all-time high for an accused company's survival and its executives' personal liberty and reputation. The way we test allegations in Anglo-American law is through the adversary system. Yet, just when it's needed the most, the adversary system is increasingly sidelined. For the public company, adversarialism may no longer be an option at all.

As a society, we have long since accepted the premise that the adversarial process, deeply embedded in our common-law tradition, will get us closer to accurate judgments. This is not just an abstract principle. Seasoned lawyers have all seen their certainty shaken by an adversary's argument. No one sees every perspective to a set of facts. The more an interpretation is tested by an opposing view, the more accurate the resulting judgment is likely to be.

Testing is especially critical in white-collar cases where questions of intent lie at the heart of the charges. Few facts are more difficult to ascertain than the knowledge and willfulness with which a defendant acted. This inherent difficulty has now been compounded by the hastily drafted securities and money laundering laws embodied in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the USA Patriot Act, whose elements require careful parsing.

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