Starr mounts Sarbanes-Oxley challenge

The AP reports:

constitutional challenge by conservatives to the law that reshaped corporate governance after a wave of business scandals likely will end up before the Supreme Court, attorney Kenneth Starr says.

The legal action that Starr is mounting against the Sarbanes-Oxley anti-fraud law is one of a trio of assaults targeting it, as small companies push for regulatory exemptions and some lawmakers prepare legislation to change it. With memories fading of the corporate fiascos of 2002 that began with Enron Corp.'s collapse, opponents of the law and its mandates on public companies and the accounting industry are banking on a changing political climate.

Starr, the former special prosecutor who led the Monica Lewinsky and Whitewater investigations of President Clinton, is one of the attorneys bringing the federal court case on behalf of a pro-business conservative group, the Free Enterprise Fund. They are challenging the board established by the 2002 law to oversee the accounting industry, arguing that it violates the Constitution's mandated separation of powers among the three branches of government.

"This constitutes an excessive delegation of power by the executive branch," Starr said in a telephone interview Thursday.

You can see how most legislation since the New Deal is at odds with the U.S. Constitution.