Journal of Law and Criminal Justice

Corporate Criminal Blameworthiness and Risks Arising from Scientific-Technological Progress
Amalia Orsina

Abstract
This paper concerns corporate criminal liability in the contexts of criminal law of risk, i.e. in those areas where companies, which are engaged in cutting-edge production activities, have to manage risks arising from scientific-technological progress. In these contexts, on the one hand the need to resort to the instrument of corporate criminal liability arises in light of both the difficulties in identifying the individual offender within modern business organisations and the fact that individuals do not generally have the cognitive and operational resources which are necessary to manage risks related to scientific-technological progress; on the other hand,an excessive extension of the corporate duty to manage such risks should be avoided, considering the irrelevance of the precautionary principle in criminal law (according to this principle anyone carrying out a dangerous act has to prevent all the risks posed by that act, including those risks not yet identified with scientific certainty). On this matter, the comparison between the Italian Legislative Decree no. 231/2001 and the UK‟s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007is worth to be developed, as they were conceived as the first corporate accountability systems innovatively projected towards the logic of the organisational fault in the European landscape.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jlcj.v9n1a9