This is the first installment of a multi-part guest blog presenting some results of the first comprehensive, large-scale, national survey of public attitudes regarding insider trading. My co-authors (Jeremy Kidd and George Mocsary) and I present the survey’s complete results in our forthcoming article, Public Perceptions of Insider Trading. This installment situates the survey amidst the ongoing debate over the goals of the U.S. insider-trading enforcement regime, and current efforts to reform it. Subsequent installments will share some of the survey results and their implications.

U.S. insider-trading law has been mired in controversy for most of its sixty-year history. Many scholars have argued that restrictions on insider trading should never have been adopted because it is victimless and improves market performance. Others claim that insider trading is unfair, imposes a tax on market participation, and undermines the public’s confidence in our capital markets. Some such critics advocate for broader theories of liability along with stiffer penalties.

Arguments on both sides of this controversy regularly appeal to claims that turn crucially on the public’s actual attitudes concerning insider trading. For example, the recently-published Report of the Bharara Task Force on Insider Trading opens with the declaration that “[m]ost…