Corporate Actus Reus

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on the ways in which corporate policies are conducted and interacted with the environment, government and communities, as well as the lives and rights of individuals. The author through this paper likes to discuss about corporates criminal liability in violation of human rights. Basically the key conceptual problem of corporate criminal liability is forging a coherent link between the corpus of criminal law — which has been developed in the context of natural persons, and to reflect the psychology of human beings and the realities of the corporate form, which is a complex fabric of human actor on one hand, and corporate hierarchies, structures, policies and attitudes on the other. The author hereby intends to highlight and emphasize that corporations can only act through human beings, yet the actions of human employees or agents always occur within the matrix of these hierarchies, structures, policies and attitudes.