Corporate Criminal Liability

Abstract

Corporate criminal liability has moved from a paradigm in which corporations, through the screen of legal personality, were not subjects of criminal law to a progressive convergence, also among multilevel sources, on the fundamental need to recognize a direct responsibility of corporations for crimes connected to their activities. In this regard, three main theoretical approaches can be identified. The first is dogmatic-deductive and characterises the traditional resistances to Collective Responsibility and its Criminal Nature. The growing recognition of a corporate criminal liability first in common law systems and then also in civil law systems is not the mere affirmation of an efficiency-oriented approach, where the need to counter corporate crime prevails. Rather, a dialectical-critical approach, oriented towards balancing the various needs, points out that the same theory of the legal person can lead to the recognition of liability, provided that the criteria for founding it are joined by a careful critical examination of its limits. Finally, the contribution considers the function of criminal sanctions in this area, the role of compliance programmes, and concludes with the main types of corporate sanctions adopted in the various legal systems