President-elect Obama has suggested using the normal US legal system to try them, but some of the evidence available under the military commissions (evidence obtained by coercion or worse) would be banned from US courts.

BBC: Top 10 foreign challenges for Obama

What makes the Madoff story interesting, though not evidence of systematic failure of the regulatory or legal system, is that Mr. Madoff and some of his clients had dealt on a basis of trust for more than a generation.

WSJ: Put Madoff In Charge of Social Security

Concluding that the wife was driven mad by domestic abuse, they plot to make absolutely sure of her acquittal by secretly destroying the evidence: the patriarchal legal system, they believe, is not fit to judge a woman.

ECONOMIST: Women's literature in America