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The Criminal Responsibility of Corporations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

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Extract

Where it has been sought to impose on a corporation liability for crimes committed by its agents in the course of its business and their employment, all the intellectual obstacles which had to be surmounted before imposing corporate liability for tort have been at least equally obstructive, besides the further difficulty that the criminal law knows no such doctrine as ‘respondeat superior.’ A man is criminally liable for his own acts and for them alone; and in order to establish his guilt it is necessary to show that two elements concur: the actus must be reus, and the mens, rea. Again there is the difficulty that a corporation is not susceptible to corporal punishment.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 1929

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References

1 3 Q. B. 223.

2 Ibid. 232. Doubt was cast upon this qualification in State v. Baltimore and O. R. R. 15 W. Va. 362; State v. Rowland Lumber Co. 153 N. C. 610.

3 (1819) 2 B. & Ald. 646.

4 [1891] 2 Q. B. 588.

5 31 Can. S. Ct. 81.

6 Anon. (1700) 12 Modern, 559.

7 (1846).9 Q. B. 315.

8 [1914] 3 K. B. 315.

9 (1854) 2 Gray, 339.

10 54 N. J. Law, 200.

11 [1909] 2 K. B. 599.

12 10 & 11 Geo. 5, c. 72.

13 [1924] 1 K. B. 102.

14 [1917] 2 K. B. 836, 845.

15 [1902] 2 K. B. 1.

16 Cf. per Wright, J. in Sherras v. de Rutzen [1895] 1 Q. B. 918, at p. 921Google Scholar.