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A Research On Corporate Criminal Responsibility

Posted on:2012-07-09Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X F WuFull Text:PDF
GTID:1116330368979989Subject:Criminal Law
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Corporation crime is also known as the unit crime in our country's criminal law and it is the inevitable result of the social and economic development and a kind of antisocial action taken by a corporate body. The emergence and development of corporation crime theory is a huge impact on the traditional criminal law theories. It is known to us that legal person is established as the civil subject and the legal person is endowed with the legal personality and becomes the legal subject together with the natural person and thus enters the real world. Since its birth, the legal person has played an extremely important role in the civil and commercial activities. A series of legal systems formed and established by the legislators on the legal person occupy a particularly important position in the system of civil laws and commercial laws. The important role played by the legal person as a subject of the civil legal relationship in the daily economic life is incomparable to the role of the natural person. However, the legal person has been divorced from the regulation scope of the criminal law for quite a long period of time. It has been a final verdict which comes down in one continuous line in the science of criminal law that the legal person cannot become the subject of crime. And, the origin of this final verdict is the principle of"organization cannot commit a crime"pursued by the ancient Roman law. This principle, after being passed down from one generation to another for thousands of years, has been deeply rooted in people's mind. Nevertheless, at present, the corporation crime we study is relative to the crime by a natural person and it has constructed its own complete system and principles with the help of the modern civil law theories and by relying on the fundamentals of the criminal law. Similar to the crime by a natural person, the corporation crime also has the relatively independent space and the specific category and the corporation crime itself is a kind of complicated social and legal phenomenon.The legal person system in the modern sense came into being quite late in our country. After liberation, since the highly centralized planned economy has been implemented for a long time and the role of the market mechanism has been ignored, the progress and development of the legal person system has been influenced and restricted to some extent. After the reform and opening-up, with the continuous deepening of the reform of the market economic system, the legal person system in our countries has developed by leaps and bounds. At the same time, the legal person itself plays a more and more important role in the arena of the economic development and its role is irreplaceable. In the process of reform, because the traditional civil laws and commercial laws cannot completely solve the problems and contradictions brought by the newly-formed economy, the economic administrative law came into being. However, the economic administrative law cannot effectively hold back and restrict the complex and volatile corporation crimes. Facing the actual situation that the corporation crimes are becoming increasingly fierce and the damages caused by the corporation crimes are increased year by year, the traditional ways to intervene and suppress the illegal acts taken by a legal person by depending on the administrative laws or the civil and commercial coercive measures have few effects. On that condition, the criminal legislation on the corporation crime came into being and our country has begun to suppress and restrict the increasingly fierce corporation crimes by formulating the rules of criminal law. As the current criminal law is issued and enforced, the criminal responsibility for a corporation crime is confirmed by means of the criminal legislation, which provides a final judgment for the disputes on the affirmation and negation of corporation crime in the field of criminal law. However, inspecting the current criminal legislation on the criminal responsibilities for a corporation crime in our country, it is not difficult to find that there are some problems that need to be clarified and the basic theoretical issues about the criminal responsibilities and criminal punishment of a legal person are still the hot topics in the academic world. Under this legislation background and theoretical research background, this thesis studies the basic theoretical issues about the corporation crime by comparing the related legislations and the theoretical research achievements at abroad with the domestic systemic researches on the criminal responsibilities for a corporation crime regulated by our country's current criminal law, and then it puts forward the suggestions for perfecting the legislations about the corporation crime in our country's criminal law, hoping to bring help to change the poor legislation on the criminal responsibilities for the corporation crime in our country's criminal law. This thesis consists of four parts.In part one, the author briefly analyzes the new development trends of legal person's criminal responsibility since the 1990s. From the development track of legal person's criminal responsibility in the international legal norms and in the domestic criminal legal norms of every country in the world, the author finds that the criminal responsibility of a corporation crime has been acknowledged globally and it has stepped into the all-around development stage. Meanwhile, by analyzing the legislations in other countries especially in Britain and America and studying the judicial practice in these countries, it is concluded that the scope to investigate legal person's criminal responsibilities according to law is continuously enlarged.In part two, the author compares, evaluates, and analyzes the present situation of legislations on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime and the related theories of criminal law in the representative countries of the Anglo-American legal system and the continental legal system. From the comparison, evaluation, and analysis above, the author draws a conclusion that the scope of application of the criminal responsibility for corporation crime in the countries which belongs to the Anglo-American legal system is gradually enlarged, the theoretical development of legal person's criminal responsibility in those countries presents the trend of diversified development, and the new theories are adopted by the legislators and play an important part in the judicial practice; compared with the countries of the Anglo-American legal system, the countries of the continental legal system are deeply restricted by the traditional criminal concept of personal liability, so both the legislations on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime and the theoretical researches on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime develop slowly; and, some countries don't acknowledge the corporation crime from legislation at all; in the limited countries that acknowledge the corporation crime, the scope of criminal responsibility in these countries is relatively narrow. In the countries which belong to the continental legal system, the criminal penalty system of corporation crime in France is innovative and the theoretical researches on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime in Japan are quite distinctive.In part three, the author makes an all-around investigation of the present situation of legislations on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime and the present situation of theoretical researches in our country. Firstly, the author reviews the process in which our country acknowledges the criminal responsibility for corporation crime and the codification process of the criminal responsibility for corporation crime. Secondly, the author classifies and summarizes the legislations on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime in our country's current criminal law and the legislative features. Thirdly, according to the previous theoretical researches on the criminal law, the author makes related researches on the concept, subject, and classification of corporation crime and the theories about the criminal responsibility for corporation crime.In part four, by investigating the present situation of legislations and theoretical researches in our country, the author finds a series of problems in our country's legislations and theoretical researches on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime: such as the problem of the connotation and extension of the criminal responsibility for corporation crime, the theoretical problems about the composition of the criminal responsibility for corporation crime, the legislation modes and criminal penalty setting, and their contradictions with the existing criminal penalty system of natural person and so on. In view of the problems mentioned above, this thesis attempts to propose some suggestions to perfect our country's legislations on the criminal responsibility for corporation crime. Firstly, we should make the definition of corporation crime in the criminal code clear and it is obviously improper that the criminal law gives up the right to legally define the corporation crime. Secondly, as for the legislation mode of the criminal responsibility for corporation crime, the author believes that we should make modifications under the legislation mode which is dominated by the double punishment system and supplemented by the single punishment principle. Thirdly, the author puts forward his own tentative plans for the integration of the criminal responsibilities for the crimes by a natural person and the corporation crimes. Finally, for the problem of the contradiction between the criminal penalty system of corporation crime and that of crime by a natural person, this thesis proposes the idea to construct the independent criminal penalty system of legal person by analyzing the criminal penalty methods and system of corporation crime in foreign countries. Only after solving these problems, can legal person's criminal responsibilities be really realized.
Keywords/Search Tags:corporate crime, criminal responsibility, criminal penalty
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