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

Education Commons

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

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Education

The Corporate Conspiracy Vacuum (Formerly "Corporate Conspiracy: How Not Calling A Conspiracy A Conspiracy Is Warping The Law On Corporate Wrongdoing"), J.S. Nelson Sep 2015

The Corporate Conspiracy Vacuum (Formerly "Corporate Conspiracy: How Not Calling A Conspiracy A Conspiracy Is Warping The Law On Corporate Wrongdoing"), J.S. Nelson

J.S. Nelson

The intracorporate conspiracy doctrine immunizes an enterprise and its agents from conspiracy prosecution based on the legal fiction that an enterprise and its agents are a single actor incapable of the meeting of two minds to form a conspiracy. The doctrine, however, misplaces incentives in contravention of agency law, criminal law, tort law, and public policy. As a result of this absence of accountability, harmful behavior is ordered and performed without consequences, and the victims of the behavior suffer without appropriate remedy.
This vacuum at the center of American conspiracy law has now warped the doctrines around it. Especially in …


The Intracorporate Conspiracy Trap (Formerly "Perverse Incentives And Corporate Conspiracy: Why We Are Asking The Wrong Basic Question In Assessing Liability For Corporations And Their Agents"), J.S. Nelson Jan 2015

The Intracorporate Conspiracy Trap (Formerly "Perverse Incentives And Corporate Conspiracy: Why We Are Asking The Wrong Basic Question In Assessing Liability For Corporations And Their Agents"), J.S. Nelson

J.S. Nelson

In the recent case of Commonwealth v. Lynn, Pennsylvania prosecuted a Roman Catholic priest who had not abused children himself but who, to protect the archdiocese that employed him, covered up information about priests who had abused children and reassigned the priests to new parishes. This case was the first of its kind to bring criminal charges against an official of the Church solely for how he supervised the careers of priests to protect his employer.
Because the intracorporate conspiracy doctrine prohibits it, the state—as is now typical of both state and federal jurisdictions around the country—was unable to prosecute …