The jailed targets of the DOJ's insider trading crackdown probably won't be spending their days sharpening homemade shanks in maximum security wards. But it's still doing time. How does the two-year sentence handed down Wednesday in the Rajat Gupta case compare with some of the other prison terms doled out so far?

Last week, seven major defense firms sent an unusual joint letter to the SEC, opposing its proposal to permit shareholders to nominate corporate directors. Wednesday the securities class action plaintiffs bar shot back, in an almost unprecedented show of interfirm cooperation.

For Royal Dutch Shell, $15.5 million is little more than a nuisance payment. But it's an immense sum for the Niger Delta residents who sued the oil giant for its complicity in the torture and death of activists protesting Shell's drilling in the Ogoni region. And more importantly, writes Michael Goldhaber of The American Lawyer, the case and settlement established important precedent for plaintiffs seeking to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses.

Enron seems like a relic from a bygone era. But the securities class action that produced $6.6 billion in settlements from the Big E's adviser banks--and then crashed to earth with a decertification ruling from the Fifth Circuit--was still alive thanks to a new plaintiffs theory. Last week that theory took a body blow.

After the magazine distributor Anderson News went into liquidation last year, its biggest remaining asset was antitrust claims against the publishers and wholesalers it blamed for its failure. But alas for Anderson, a Manhattan federal judge didn't think those claims were worth much at all.