Supreme Court Should Side With SEC Fraudster: Stephen L. Carter

No one wants to come down on the side of people who commit fraud. But last week, the US Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the Securities and Exchange Commission might have gone too far in punishing one. And in this unusually fraught political moment, we would do well to ponder the possibility that the fraudster should prevail.

The case in question is Sripetch v. the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, on its face, raises only the technical question of under what circumstances a person who commits securities fraud can be made to disgorge the profits from the fraud. As a ...