From contract to speech: the courts and CPA licensing laws 1921-1996

This paper explores the ways in which accounting, licensing legislation and the courts have intersected over time, shaping and reshaping the contours of the CPA's economic jurisdiction and thereby restricting and/or enhancing com petition between CPAs and the uncertified. While much attention has fo cused on the use of legislation and favorable interpretations of these stat utes as a means of obtaining and expanding exclusive areas of work, little work has considered the role of the courts as a forum in which to contest a nd thereby limit the expansion activities of CPAs. The courts have played a n important role in deciding issues such as who can be called a CPA, who ca n be called an accountant and when can a CPA be called a CPA. In deciding t hese issues, the courts have relied upon shifting constitutional arguments to advance and curb the jurisdiction building activities of CPAs. Early arg uments called upon notions of the freedom of contract to challenge legislat ively imposed limits on who might perform accounting work. Such arguments w ere later supplemented and eventually supplanted by those based upon freedo m of speech, a freedom only recently held to extend to commercial speech. T hese shifting arguments are traced in the paper which concludes with some o bservations about the changing significance of the CPA designation. (C) 199 9 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.