New Whistleblowing Regulations in the USA

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 established new regulations concerning thetreatment of whistleblowing employees and lawyers. The main objective forthese new mechanisms was to prevent further corporate scandals as recentlyhappened in the USA. Employees and lawyers are supposed to contribute animportant part in terms of monitoring corporate conduct. This essay tracesthe reasons behind the critique of whistleblowing regulations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002. It shows that the newly adopted rules are not capableof establishing a working concept for monitoring corporations 'from the inside'.The Sarbanes-Oxley Act does not provide sufficient protection for employeeswho blow the whistle against retaliations by their employers. It failedto establish procedures to ensure that whistleblowing will no longer beignored. Furtehermore this essay shows that the current requirements forlawyers are not effective in terms of monitoring corporate conduct. Lawyerswill most likely stay reluctant to disclose confidential information. The essayshows that outside reporting rules for lawyers significantly endanger theattorney-client privilege and cause considerable problems for non-US lawyers.At the bottom the Sarbanes-Oxley Act failed to establish a working regime ofthe promising idea to monitor corporate conduct from the inside.