“It took only 16 years, but the Justice Department’s horribly misguided “Holder Doctrine” has finally been relegated to the dustbin of history where it belongs.

“The Holder Doctrine was the name given to a June 1999 memorandum written by Eric H. Holder Jr., then the deputy attorney general of the United States, whom President Obama nominated in 2009 to become attorney general, a position he held until his retirement this year.

“Mr. Holder’s argument essentially was that big financial institutions are “too big to jail” because the potential for “collateral consequences” from prosecutions — including corporate instability or collapse — had to be considered when deciding whether to bring a case against them, or apparently, against anyone who worked there and engaged in bad behavior.”

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Read the full New York Times by William D. Cohan here.