The following is a guest post by Sayuri Umeda, a foreign law specialist who covers Japan and other countries in East and Southeast Asia in the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress. Sayuri has previously authored numerous posts for In Custodia Legis, including, The History of the Elimination of Leaded Gasoline; The Law Library’s New Report on Public Prosecution Reform in South Korea; Law Library’s New Report Reviews Foreign Ownership of Land Restriction in Major Economies; FALQs: The Conscription System of South Korea; and many more!
In criminal law, an act combined with intent constitutes a crime. Corporations are legal persons who cannot act and do not have a mind, independent of their officers, managers, and employees. In most jurisdictions, corporations can be held responsible for the criminal actions of their officers and employees, particularly when those actions are committed within the scope of their employment and benefit the corporation. However, jurisdictional approaches vary.
The Global Legal Research Directorate (GLRD) of the Law Library of Congress surveyed the law governing corporate criminal liability in selected jurisdictions from around the world, focusing on how certain categories of crime are punished. The report covers 60 jurisdictions, including 11 in the Americas, 18 in Europe (including the European Union), 15 in the Middle East, 3 in Africa, and 13 in Asia and the Pacific.
The jurisdictional surveys reveal four approaches: A. corporations may be punished for the same crimes as natural persons; B. corporations may be punished for crimes only when specific provisions so prescribe; C. corporations are not subject to criminal liability, but administrative punishments may be imposed; and D. the criminal liability of corporations is covered in special legislation addressing this topic. Most of the jurisdictions surveyed for this report fall within the first or second categories.
You can read the entire report or for a summary, you can look at the informative table included with the report. Read the report here.
This report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website). The Law Library also regularly publishes articles related to corporations in the Global Legal Monitor.
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