Pushback against SEC and its broad powers

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to show it can be trusted with a potent weapon: the ability to act as prosecutor, judge and jury in its pursuit of financial miscreants. The real question is why it should have such power in the first place.

In the U.S., the judicial branch doesn't have a monopoly on dispensing justice. Myriad regulatory agencies, including the SEC, have their own in-house proceedings. Originally, these were designed to handle misconduct. Punishments were mostly limited to disciplinary measures, such as revoking registrations. The idea was to handle routine business more quickly and efficiently than federal courts.

Over the past few decades, though, the SEC’s powers have expanded immensely. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 gave the agency’s judges authority to impose large monetary penalties on anyone who violated federal securities laws – not just on regulated people and companies. The SEC no longer had to go to federal civil court to pursue many securities-fraud and insider-trading cases. A janitor who passed on a stock tip could end up being tried and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars without ever setting foot in a real court.

Not surprisingly, an initial push by the SEC to send more cases to its administrative judges provoked a backlash. Defendants have challenged the system's constitutionality.

To its credit, the SEC has pulled back in recent months and offered some changes for public debate. Among other things, the agency proposes giving the defense more time to prepare and the ability to obtain depositions from as many as five witnesses.

There's another way. So why not let defendants – at least, those not regulated by the SEC – choose the system in which their cases will be heard? If the SEC won't allow it, Congress can.

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Pushback against SEC and its broad powers."