A new bill in Congress seeks to curb securities regulators' purported in-house advantage over defendants who are brought before the agency's administrative law judges, the National Law Journal reported today. But law scholars who have crunched the numbers say that the legislation is inspired by incomplete data. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) last month introduced the Due Process Restoration Act of 2015, which gives targets of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission the right to terminate any proceeding the agency brings in front of an administrative law judge rather than in a U.S. district court. The bill would also boost the government's standard of proof for any defendant who keeps a case in the administrative venue. Individual and corporate defendants have spent several years challenging the commission's forum selection, arguing that administrative proceedings unfairly strip constitutional due process and jury rights that would otherwise be available in a federal trial court.
