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Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2006

Faculty Scholarship

Duke Law

Corporation law--Criminal provisions

Discipline

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Blaming Function Of Entity Criminal Liability, Samuel W. Buell Jan 2006

The Blaming Function Of Entity Criminal Liability, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Application of the doctrine of entity criminal liability, which had only a thin tort-like rationale at inception, now sometimes instantiates a social practice of blaming institutions. Examining that social practice can ameliorate persistent controversy over entity liability's place in the criminal law. An organization's role in its agent's bad act is often evaluated with a moral slant characteristic of judgments of criminality and with inquiry into whether the institution qua institution contributed to the agent's wrong. Legal process, by lending clarity and authority, enhances the communicative impact, in the form of reputational effects, of blaming an institution for a wrong. …


Novel Criminal Fraud, Samuel W. Buell Jan 2006

Novel Criminal Fraud, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

The crime of fraud has been underdescribed and undertheorized, both as a wrong and as a legal prohibition. These deficits contribute to contention and uncertainty over the practice of punishing white-collar crime. This Article provides a fuller account of criminal fraud, describing fraud law's open-textured, common-law, and adaptive qualities and explaining how fraud law develops along its leading edge while limiting violence to the legality principle. The legal system has a surprising, often overlooked methodology for resolving whether to treat novel commercial behaviors as frauds: Courts and enforcers often conduct an ex post examination of whether an actor's mental state …