CEOs of Wall Street firms that take advantage of a federal bailout should be forced by Congress to publicly apologize, or to provide pro bono services to homeowners facing foreclosure, two Northwestern University School of Law professors say in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune.
Kenworthey Bilz and Janice Nadler say Americans “want to make sure wrongdoers do not misbehave again. But more crucially, we want punishment to express our outrage in a way that declares fundamental moral truths. We want punishment that will tell the offender he was wrong to have put his own interests or pleasure above the well-being of the rest of us.”
“No matter how severe the punishment, if it fails to deliver this message, the public will not accept it,” they write.