The US Supreme Court will this week step into the debate over the use of the so-called "corporate death penalty" when it re-examines the case that caused the first fatality of the post-Enron period: the 2002 conviction of Arthur Andersen for witness tampering.

The issue before the court, which will hear arguments in the case tomorrow, is narrow and technical: was the law correctly explained to the jury that handed down the verdict that led to Andersen's demise? But by agreeing to reconsider the case, the justices have revived public debate over whether Andersen should ever have been indicted as a business in the first place, or whether individual wrongdoers should have been charged instead, with far less cataclysmic consequences for the firm and the thousands of innocent employees who lost their jobs with its demise.