In the movie Wall Street, the character Gordon Gekko declares that “greed is good.” Certainly greed is one of the most basic motivations for human conduct.
However, the field of corporate and securities law is founded upon the premise that human greed should be channeled toward the more productive ends of capitalism and away from conduct that achieves financial gain through the exploitation of others.
It is this fascination with the concepts behind the punishment of corporate crime that fuels the research and teaching of legal scholar Edward Fallone, J.D. “When I was a law student, my corporate law professor treated the study of insider trading, hostile takeovers and corporate crimes as the dry recitation of legal rules to be memorized,” explains Fallone, an associate professor in Marquette’s Law School. “My approach to teaching is different. I teach these cases as human tragedies (and sometimes comedies) involving greed, betrayal and corruption. In my view, the law in this area serves the classic end of all laws: to protect ourselves from our own worst impulses.”
In light of today’s dramatic headlines of corporate malfeasance, Fallone is looking at the concepts behind the legal code governing corporate law. Specifically, when most criminal law is premised on determining blameworthiness and the condemnation of an individual’s mental state, where is the mind in a corporation? Whose mental state is it? And what punishment will serve the greatest good, for both the injured party and society?
Fallone is examining whether specific corporate statutes should exist in Wisconsin to deal with these issues within the criminal justice system. His research looks at what he calls the “prism of assumptions” that has created the laws as they exist today. “Maybe we have been looking at this in the wrong light. If we already go after individuals involved in a corporate financial scandal such as existed at Enron, what does society gain by also going after the company?”
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| Identity: | Catholic, Jesuit, private |
| Established: | 1881 |
| Location: | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
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