Jed Rakoff: The judge who rules on business

Long before he sentenced Rajat Gupta to prison, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff had a celebrated and controversial career on the bench. His judicial opinions were thoughtful, direct, and witty. (And, on occasion, reversed by higher courts.) In 2009 he rebuked the SEC for what he found to be insufficient punishment of Bank of America for nondisclosure violations. In 2002 he — unsuccessfully — declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional.
The past year was particularly remarkable for Rakoff. In May 2012 he presided over the $163 million settlement between the owners of the New York Mets and the trustee for the victims of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. And then, in late October, Rakoff sentenced a once highly respected business executive — Gupta, a Goldman Sachs (GS) director who used to run McKinsey & Co. — to two years in prison, plus fined him $5 million, for insider trading. Federal sentencing guidelines, which are not mandatory, called for roughly four times that; the government had recommended even more jail time.
See CNN Money report here.