Compliance Then and Now

Abstract

This paper considers the past, present, and future of organizational compliance. The paper identifies compliance in its modern form as the product of conscious design -- the application of learned principles of internal control in which compliance itself is conceived as a topic of analysis. It grounds the development of modern compliance in the burgeoning of the administrative state and the transition from judging to administration – the progressive displacement of judges from their traditional roles of interpreting the law, conducting trials, determining liability, and assigning penalties. Although compliance in its modern form experienced its greatest early development in the United States, it is now a worldwide phenomenon. The paper argues that the modern form of compliance is a product of two vectors of public policy: one moving from the bottom up, as policymakers apply lessons learned from experience to the formulation of compliance strategies for the future, and one moving from the top down, as policymakers enlist general principles and ideas in the design of concrete programs.