The Concept of White Collar Crime in Law and Legal Theory

Abstract

Use of the term “white collar crime” to refer to some category of illegal, or at least deviant, conduct is now a common feature of our linguistic landscape. Sociologists and criminologists, though disagreeing among themselves about exactly what the term means, have been talking about white collar crime for more than sixty years. The majority of American law schools have a course in the subject. Journalists and politicians refer to it regularly. Law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and defense attorneys all claim expertise in the area. And the term is increasingly being used outside the United States, both in English and in translation. Yet, despite its currency in the academic, professional, and popular culture, the term “white collar crime” occurs only rarely in substantive criminal law. The term appears in only a handful of relatively obscure criminal statutes, and the question whether an offense should be considered a white collar crime is one that has arisen in even fewer cases. Or at least that was the case until recently. For it is striking that, in the recently-enacted Sarbanes-Oxley Act— one of the most important pieces of federal criminal law legislation in many years, and the subject of this symposium—the term makes a prominent appearance. The aim of this article is to inquire into the many meanings of white collar crime. I begin by identifying three fault lines upon which disagreement over use of the term has developed, particularly among social scientists. Here, we find a remarkably wide range of both proposed definitions and terminological alternatives. I then turn to the various ways in which the term has been used by law