The Comparative History and Theory of Corporate Criminal Liability

Abstract:     
This paper is an exercise in comparative legal history and theory. It argues, first, that traditional views of the history of corporate criminal liability in German and Anglo-American law are interestingly mistaken, or at least incomplete, taken independently and comparatively, and, second, that histories and theories of corporate criminal liability engage in symbolic jurisprudence insofar as they treat their subject as a litmus test for other, more fundamental, phenomena, such as the relative influence of Roman and German law or the relative commitment of systems of criminal law to science, truth, and justice.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 26

Keywords: corporate criminal liability, corporations, personhood, mens rea, comparative law, criminal law, legal history, comparative legal history, Gierke, Savigny, Maitland, German criminal law, American criminal law

JEL Classification: K14, K30, K33

working papers series