The Accounting Court: Some Speculations on Why Not?

The accounting court proposed by Leonard Spacek in 1958 was a potent and controversial idea. The court would provide a venue to which auditing firms and clients could bring disputes over the application of accounting principles and over time would build a database of casework illustrating the court’s decisions on proper application and interpretation of accounting principles. Previous literature has not investigated why such a court has never been implemented.  In this paper, we contribute to the literature on both the accounting court and on standard setting by analyzing group value orientations and motivations that should promote the likelihood of an accounting court appearing in these times.  We base our analysis in value group theory, an analysis rooted in an examination of operational and terminal values of key participants. This analysis provides a flexible but powerful tool for analyzing motivations that may impact behavior of key organizations in the accounting domain.