Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society
Exhibits
June 2020

Documents from Historic Insider Trading Cases - United States v. Newman & Chiarella v. United States



"Insider Trading – The Case of Chiarella v. United States Most insider trading cases involve facts that are relatively simple, and those at issue in Chiarella v. United States, 445 U.S. 222 (1980), are no exception. The defendant was an employee of a financial printing firm hired to print announcements of takeover bids. He managed on several occasions to deduce from code names the identities of the actual companies, and then surreptitiously purchased stock in the acquisition targets—reaping a $30,000 profit after the deals were announced. He was tried before a jury and convicted of a criminal violation of SEC Rule 10b-5. But after losing his appeal to the Second Circuit, he ultimately prevailed before the U.S. Supreme Court in March 1980. The divided Court’s iconic ruling, as to the circumstances under which insider trading constitutes securities fraud, continues to define the law’s contours right up to the present day."

– Donna M. Nagy


Related Museum Resources

Papers

May 16, 1977
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
May 23, 1977
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
January 1,1978
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
April 1, 1978
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
February 2, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
March 29, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
June 1, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
June 28, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
August 10, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
October 31, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
November 5, 1979
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
January 4, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
January 7, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
January 31, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
February 1, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
February 4, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
February 5, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
February 6, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
February 11, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
March 5, 1980
image pdf (Harry A. Blackmun Papers, courtesy Library of Congress)
March 18, 1980
Supreme Court of the United States: Vincent F. Chiarella v. United States on Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Court of Appeals

(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

January 1,1981
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
June 29, 1981
document pdf (Courtesy of Donna Nagy)
June 2, 1983
image pdf (Courtesy of the estate of John R. Evans; made possible through a gift from Quinton F. Seamons)
Autumn 2020, Vol. 15, Issue 1
document pdf
Autumn 2020, Vol. 15, Issue 1
document pdf

Oral Histories

13 January 2011

Frank Easterbrook

09 August 2006

John Fedders

08 April 2009

Anne Flannery

07 April 2015

Edward Fleischman

14 April 2008

Daniel Goelzer

Video: 10:10

Daniel Goelzer served on the staff of the SEC from the mid-70’s through 1990. He began his SEC career in 1974 as a staff attorney in the Office of the General Counsel, and rose through the ranks to become the Commission’s General Counsel from 1983 to 1990. He also worked in the Office of the Chairman and was Executive Assistant to both Chairman Harold Williams and Chairman John Shad. After leaving the SEC, he was partner at the law firm of Baker & McKenzie LLP in Washington, DC until his appointment as a founding Board member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) in 2002. He served as PCAOB’s Acting Chairman from 2009 – 2011 and returned to Baker & McKenzie after his PCAOB term ended in 2012. He was one of the founding Trustees of the SEC Historical Society.

12 July 2006

Paul Gonson - Part I

Video: 17:55

Paul Gonson began working at the SEC in 1961 and held a number of positions during his 37-year career at the agency. He started out in the Division of Corporate Regulation, then transferred in 1967 to the Office of General Counsel where he became primarily an appellate attorney. When David Ferber retired from his post as the Solicitor in 1979, Gonson was appointed to take his place. During the next 20 years, he worked on a number of enforcement cases, primarily insider trading, many of which he argued before the Supreme Court. In 1998, he retired from the SEC and joined the firm of Kirpatrick & Lockhart.

15 February 2008

Edward F. Greene

Video: 7:01

Ed Greene served at the SEC from 1978 to 1982, first as director of the Division of Corporation Finance under Chairman Harold Williams, then as General Counsel under Chairman John Shad. He was involved in several ground-breaking projects. As director of Corporation Finance, he led efforts to integrate and improve disclosures around Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), and spearheaded efforts to create faster access to markets for shelf registrations. As general counsel, he negotiated the agency’s first Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which became a template for future cooperative agreements between governments. Mr. Greene was a founding trustee of the SEC Historical Society.

02 June 2009

John Huber

18 November 2005

Roberta Karmel

February 11, 2020

Donald C. Langevoort

Video: 1:35:49

Donald C. Langevoort is the Thomas Aquinas Reynolds Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He joined the Georgetown faculty in 1999 after eighteen years at Vanderbilt University School of Law. Professor Langevoort graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1976, and went into private practice with the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington. In 1978, he joined the staff of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission as Special Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel. Since entering academia in 1981, Professor Langevoort has written a treatise on insider trading, co-authored a casebook on securities regulation, and produced numerous law review articles on topics such as insider trading, the impact of technology on securities regulation, investor behavior and the intersection between cognitive psychology and lawyers’ professional responsibilities.

25 July 2006

Theodore Levine

19 July 2006

Gary Lynch

07 April 2010

Donald Malawsky

  • - Part 1
  • - Part 2
  • edited transcript (pdf)
Made possible through the support of ASECA - Association of SEC Alumni, Inc.
29 April 2015

Juan Marcelino

08 May 2013

John Olson

17 January 2007

Norman Poser

24 May 2004

Richard Rowe

  • - Part 1
  • - Part 2
  • - Part 3
  • edited transcript (pdf)
27 May 2015

David Ruder

19 July 2006

Ira Lee Sorkin

26 January 2011

Donald Strauber

14 July 2006

John Sturc

Programs

November 5, 2020

Insider Trading: A Program Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Chiarella v. United States

Presenter(s): On November 5, the Society partnered with NYU Pollack Center for Law and Business and the Indiana University Mauer School of Law to sponsor a virtual symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of Chiarella v. United States. The 2-hour program explored the fascinating backstories of the Chiarella prosecution and the Supreme Court argument as well as the SEC's and DOJ's insider trading enforcement strategies in the aftermath of the Court's ruling.
02 June 2011

Supreme Court and the SEC (Twelfth Annual Meeting)

Moderator: Kurt Hohenstein
Presenter(s): David Becker, Adam Pritchard
22 May 2007

Fireside Chat - Insider Trading

Moderator: Theresa Gabaldon
Presenter(s): Donna Nagy, Mark Radke

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