The SEC has recently leaned more heavily on its in-house tribunal, using powers granted in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law to send its judges more insider-trading and other serious contested cases, the Wall Street Journal reported today. That practice, however, has attracted a growing number of critics and focused attention on the five judges who handle the cases. The SEC won against 86 percent of defendants in contested cases in its own courts from October 2010 through September 2015, according to an updated analysis by the Wall Street Journal — significantly higher than the agency’s 70 percent win rate in federal court. Thomas McGonigle, a former SEC enforcement official who is now at the law firm Murphy & McGonigle, said that the SEC judges aren’t deliberately biased, but the system itself appears inherently skewed toward the agency. “The SEC and its trial team get the benefit of the doubt in that forum,” he said.
