Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties and international instruments
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The policy context of international crimes
- 3 Why corporations kill and get away with it: the failure of law to cope with crime in organizations
- 4 Men and abstract entities: individual responsibility and collective guilt in international criminal law
- 5 A historical perspective: from collective to individual responsibility and back
- 6 Command responsibility and Organisationsherrschaft: ways of attributing international crimes to the ‘most responsible’
- 7 Joint criminal enterprise and functional perpetration
- 8 System criminality at the ICTY
- 9 Criminality of organizations under international law
- 10 Criminality of organizations: lessons from domestic law – a comparative perspective
- 11 The collective accountability of organized armed groups for system crimes
- 12 Assumptions and presuppositions: state responsibility for system crimes
- 13 State responsibility for international crimes
- 14 Responses of political organs to crimes by states
- 15 Conclusions and outlook
- Index
10 - Criminality of organizations: lessons from domestic law – a comparative perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Table of treaties and international instruments
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The policy context of international crimes
- 3 Why corporations kill and get away with it: the failure of law to cope with crime in organizations
- 4 Men and abstract entities: individual responsibility and collective guilt in international criminal law
- 5 A historical perspective: from collective to individual responsibility and back
- 6 Command responsibility and Organisationsherrschaft: ways of attributing international crimes to the ‘most responsible’
- 7 Joint criminal enterprise and functional perpetration
- 8 System criminality at the ICTY
- 9 Criminality of organizations under international law
- 10 Criminality of organizations: lessons from domestic law – a comparative perspective
- 11 The collective accountability of organized armed groups for system crimes
- 12 Assumptions and presuppositions: state responsibility for system crimes
- 13 State responsibility for international crimes
- 14 Responses of political organs to crimes by states
- 15 Conclusions and outlook
- Index
Summary
Introduction
As very simply and decisively stated by Lord Holt in an anonymous case of 1701, over many centuries it was common belief that ‘a corporation is not indictable, but the particular members of it are’.
Nowadays, when dealing with the criminal responsibility of organizations, that statement cannot be upheld any more. In fact, as already called for at to outset of the last century by one of the then leading German-Austrian criminal law professors, Franz von Liszt, criminal responsibility for legal and collective entities has been widely achieved, though only to varying degrees and in different forms.
In most European countries the national legislatures have created possibilities to hold legal and collective entities criminally responsible. In so far, one can witness an approximation to the Anglo-American jurisdictions, which have known a form of ‘corporate criminal liability’ since the beginning of the last century.
With introducing criminal responsibility of legal and collective entities, many legislatures of the large industrial nations paid tribute to the ever increasing economic development followed by an increase of ‘corporate crimes’. At present, hardly a day passes without media reports of criminal offences committed by enterprises and their executive personnel.
There is no doubt that many legislatures are both aware of this criminal conduct and determined to fight this by new legal measures and sanctions. It is, however, equally true that the legal and procedural problems involved are still far from having been solved in a satisfying and uniform manner.
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- System Criminality in International Law , pp. 222 - 237Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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