Law Commons^™

Crossing The Fault Line In Corporate Criminal Law, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Why is it that so few bankers have been prosecuted and punished in the wake of the financial meltdown? Pundits are quick to point to inadequate funding for addressing financial crime or, more cynically, the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and Wall Street. But the ultimate answer may be at once more banal and more dispiriting, lying as it does at the very foundations of our criminal law.

The conception of responsibility underpinning much of our criminal law contemplates the individual in isolation from others. As a result, our criminal law has tremendous difficulty tracking culpability in organizational contexts. …

Responsible Shares And Shared Responsibility: In Defense Of Responsible Corporate Officer Liability, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

When a corporation commits a crime, whom may we hold criminally liable? One obvious set of defendants consists of the individuals who perpetrated the crime on the corporation’s behalf. But according to the responsible corporate officer (“RCO”) doctrine, the government may also prosecute and punish those corporate executives who, although perhaps lacking “consciousness of wrongdoing,” nonetheless have “a responsible share in the furtherance of the transaction which the statute outlaws.” In other words, under the RCO doctrine, a corporate executive can come to bear criminal responsibility for an offense of her corporation that she neither participated in nor culpably failed …

The Curious Case Of Corporate Criminality, Erik Luna

Erik Luna

No abstract provided.

“The Relevance Of Prior Record In The Criminal Law: A Response To The Theory Of Professor Von Hirsch”, Darcy Macpherson

Darcy L MacPherson

No abstract provided.