Bert W. Wasserman Workshop in Law and Finance.
Open to invited guests only.
Susan Rose-Ackerman is the Henry R. Luce Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence and Professorial Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School and Department of Political Science at Yale University.
Tina Søreide is a Professor of Law and Economics at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) and a YLS Visiting Senior Research Scholar in Law. She is currently Special Adviser to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries and was Director General of the Norwegian Competition Authority from January 2022 to 2025.
ABSTRACT for Coaches or Cops? The Transatlantic Recasting of Regulatory Agencies:
Over the past three decades, European regulatory agencies have been pushed—by EU policy, OECD recommendations, and U.S. influence—toward “American-style” enforcement against large corporations. In antitrust and anti-money laundering (AML) control, this shift means higher penalties, stronger deterrence ambitions, and more use of settlements. Yet, these ambitions collide with structural and procedural fundamentals of the continental European legal tradition: inquisitorial criminal law, human rights constraints on strict liability, and a sharp institutional divide between administrative and criminal enforcement.
Drawing on case studies from Norway, France, Germany, and the United States, this work-in-progress examines the consequences of that mismatch. It explores why U.S. agencies can process high-penalty corporate cases more quickly and frequently than their European counterparts, and why European agencies—originally designed as sectoral competence centers with a “coach rather than cop” orientation—struggle to deliver on new enforcement expectations. The analysis integrates law & economics on corporate liability, comparative administrative and criminal procedure, and organizational perspectives on agency adaptation.
Preliminary observations suggest that, in Europe, the push for high-impact enforcement has led agencies to concentrate resources on a few major cases—often losing in court—while routine oversight and follow-up on whistleblower reports suffer. The study asks whether institutional redesign, procedural innovation, or strategic case selection could reconcile deterrence ambitions with the procedural safeguards and institutional legacies that shape European enforcement.