英文摘要 |
Traditional criminal culpability is premised on the personal fault relating to natural persons. To cope with corporate crime connected with business activities, many countries (including Taiwan) have introduced corporate crime legislations attributing criminal responsibility to legal entities. “Can corporate bodies commit crimes?” and “How do they do this?” are the difficult questions to answer. Due to these difficulties, Taiwan corporate crime provisions contain dubious forms of corporate liability. It demonstrates the need to examine these legislations and their applications from the basic principles of criminal law. This Article begins with the reviews of current criminal administrative offenses provisions in light of the judicial interpretations and literatures. As the studies demonstrate, courts have gradually relied on the principle of personal fault liability to interpret these provisions. However, the question how legal entities commit offenses by itself is neglected. After assessing all types of legislations, this Article recommends that the dual corporate liability mode which punishes legal person and natural person is most consistent with the principle of personal fault liability declared in J.Y. Interpretation No. 687. Under present law, two forms of liability are best fitted for corporate crime. One (vertical mode) is the legislation which requires the initial commission of an offense by a natural person. The other (horizontal mode) is the legislation which mainly designed to deal with crimes committed by legal entities itself. The two forms of liability discussed are premised on the personal fault of legal entity as principle offender. Accordingly, this Article proceeds to develop the concept of principle offender on the basis of the theories of organizational behavior and organizational blameworthiness which view corporations as culpability-bearing agents in their own right and regard corporate policy, culture and management failure as potential sources of intentional and negligent culpability. Finally, this Article discusses a corporate environmental crime case to illustrate how to apply the theories of organizational offender. |