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Can a corporation be pardoned?
- pfdietz 1y agoI worry more about government officials engaging in illegal acts. "Qualified immunity", my ass.
- trollbridge 1y agoA better question is "Do corporations really face any real penalties for criminal convictions"? (No, they don't.)
- actionfromafar 1y agoYet, they have "free speech" it appears. There's even an idea to give AI agents "free speech", whatever that means.
- cperciva 1y agoI think there's a more fundamental question, "what does it mean for a corporation to engage in criminal conduct?" A corporation is just a group of people acting together, and it's pretty well established in international law that collective punishment isn't acceptable; and on the flip side, a corporation can neither "act" nor "think" independently, but rather does so via the humans involved. (Perhaps this would change with corporate-owned AI?) In all the cases I've seen where a corporation is alleged to have engaged in criminal conduct, there was in fact a human -- or several humans -- who were broke the law. As far as I'm concerned, that's where the buck should stop; it seems that prosecutors tend to target corporations simply because it's easier than doing their job properly and pinning down who specifically bears responsibility.
- mindslight 1y ago> a corporation can neither "act" nor "think" independently, but rather does so via the humans involved. (Perhaps this would change with corporate-owned AI?) This is ignoring that levels of complexity creates new emergent behavior. If you're willing to believe that "AI" could make a corporation think independently, then how is a pile of paperwork running on a substrate of human wetware not the same dynamic? > it seems that prosecutors tend to target corporations simply because it's easier than doing their job properly and pinning down who specifically bears responsibility No, the problem is exactly the sorting through the emergent complexity of the corporation to correctly assign blame. The low-level person who did the actual illegal action is likely sympathetic and mostly judgement proof, and was likely incentivized to break the law by corporate policies. Meanwhile the corporate policies are phrased in terms of abstract metrics that aren't illegal per se, especially how they're written down. Taking the fundamentalist view, that the individual would-be-fall-guy humans should take a hard line and refuse to break the law, doesn't solve the problem - it only increases the level of incentive required until someone is willing to do it. And focusing blame this way helps the higher up management escape accountability since they didn't actually break the law themselves. One correct answer would be to charge all of the involved parties like the criminal conspiracy it is, but the capital-wielding upper classes escaping accountability is a dynamic as old as time.
- bee_rider 1y agoCompanies have policies… stuff like data retention policies, for example, could be set up in a way as to obfuscate criminal activity, but in a way not obvious to a reasonable good-faith individual working for the company. In that case, the company should be made to change. I guess it would also be ok to go after C-levels or whoever sets the policy. But, it will be hard, I think. High-level guidance can create an incentive structure to break the law without actually saying “break the law.”
- BrenBarn 1y ago> High-level guidance can create an incentive structure to break the law without actually saying “break the law.” The creation of such an incentive structure should itself be illegal.
- bee_rider 1y agoI basically agree but I think it would be really tricky to implement. What about giving you bank employees performance numbers that can’t really be met with due diligence, and then not checking their work too much. Similarly, it is evident that software companies are not able to produce defect-free software (so, somebody is setting up an incentive structure to push bugs into production). There must be some wrong incentive structures, but it is hard to say where they come from.
- nickpsecurity 1y agoYou're leaving off both the "limited liability" and "it's a person with legal rights" parts of a corporation. If it's a person, then they might have to go after the corporation. Alternatively, each corporate crime might be a conspiracy charge. With limited liability, it's unclear how much one can discourage the bad behavior if there's distance between the owners and the punishment. I oppose both of these concept by default for criminal behavior. Power and accountability should always go hand in hand. Only people should be people, too.
- trollbridge 1y agoLimited liability is the source of many ills. I'm fine with people pooling capital to create partnerships, but where things take an odd turn is the idea you can create a business enterprise that can incur massive debts, yet face no accountability for repaying the damage such an enterprise causes.
- great_wubwub 1y agoSo a corporation can do bad things like poison entire communities and get out of trouble by slipping the president some money? And that's how the framers intended this to work? We sure have come a long way since "by the people, for the people". It's the capitalist version of buying indulgences (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence). Sounds like it's time for 95 Theses II: Electric Boogaloo.
- collingreen 1y agoThis does seem to capture a lot of current events and sentiment. Corporatocracy instead of democracy.
- ekaryotic 1y agoI saw a comment saying that western democracy is a direct evolution of the roman empire and even worse when it comes to committing genocide and slavery, since there's nobody directly responsible.
- codr7 1y agoAnd the US is the latest iteration of the same imperialist bullshit mindset; or at least was until very recently, what happens from here is anyone's guess.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoTHE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED
- cheschire 1y agoThe opposite questions are more interesting. Can corporations truly be held accountable? Could we institute a corporation death penalty?
- gruez 1y ago"corporation death penalty" just sounds like the state seizing the company (dispossessing existing shareholders in the process), but worded more dramatically.
- bombcar 1y agoSeizing the company keeps the company running - likely. The “corporate death penalty” would be seizing it and selling off assets at such small pieces that it would be hard to reassemble the whole.
- gruez 1y agoWhat's the point in scattering the company into a bazillion pieces? Let's take the example of a company that would deserve the corporate death penalty the most, Purdue Pharma. What would the point in breaking it up? Is leaving it intact going to cause the next opioid epidemic or something?
- fmajid 1y agoAccountancy firm Arthur Andersen suffered a de facto corporate death penalty for rubber-stamping Enron's accounts.
- bombcar 1y agoThe whole point of a CDP is to push some liability onto the limited liability shareholders. Basically, make it so there are crimes that the shareholders will themselves police the company, because they don’t want to risk losing it all. Part of a CDP would be NOT paying back bondholders, etc. it’s spreading the pain around so nobody will lend or support a company doing activities that open the door to CDP.
- GarnetFloride 1y agoCan a corporation be arrested? Jailed? Executed? About the only thing I see that can be done to a corporation is to be bankrupted.
- analog31 1y agoOne way of holding corporations accountable is by lifting the limitation of liability as a penalty for extreme misconduct. Liability limitation is kind of the mother of all entitlements.
- fmajid 1y agoThis exists and is called "piercing the corporate veil", but it is only applied in circumstances of extreme and blatant criminality by the corporation, at least in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil
- bluefirebrand 1y agoI think what OP is saying is that the corporate veil should not exist at all Executives should be held accountable for making decisions or approving company direction that break laws I know there's a lot of complexity here with how businesses operate But it is really messed up that individuals can enrich themselves an incredible amount by directing companies to break laws, and often suffer zero consequences for that because the corporate veil is such a strong mechanism
- gruez 1y ago>Executives should be held accountable for making decisions or approving company direction that break laws Isn't that already the case? If an executive ordered a hit on someone, that doesn't become magically legal because he was doing it on behalf of the company.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoOrdering a hit is a pretty extreme example that probably would pierce the corporate veil But also the problem isn't that it becomes "magically legal",the problem is that the corporate veil means that if a company takes illegal actions then often only the company is held accountable, instead of the people responsible for directing the company to take illegal actions And it takes a high bar (like ordering a hit) to make the legal system try and hold individuals accountable for company actions I am arguing that is absurd. I think individuals inside companies take advantage of this often to get away with illegal shit to enrich themselves at the company's expense
- A_Duck 1y agoI always find it interesting when legal opinions cite other countries’ precedents It makes sense because it maximises the hit-rate of finding a relevant precedent, and kind of creates a global system of common law. Countries with newer legal systems (like Canada) can bootstrap centuries of precedent this way. Nearly a third of Canadian Supreme Court judgements cite foreign precedent!
- fmajid 1y agoThere is a continuity with British law as it existed before Independence. In a similar vein, Israeli law incorporates Ottomon law, and France applies some German law in Alsace-Lorraine (which was annexed by Germany 1870-1914), even really fundamental principles like the separation of Church and State which does not apply there.
- 317070 1y agoBut relatively few countries follow common law with its focus on precedents. In fact, civil law is a lot more common, and that one cares less about precedents. [0] > The primary contrast between the two systems is the role of written decisions and precedent as a source of law (one of the defining features of common law legal systems). While Common law systems place great weight on precedent, civil law judges tend to give less weight to judicial precedent. For example, the Napoleonic Code expressly forbade French judges to pronounce general principles of law. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#/media/File%3AMap_of_the_Legal_systems_of_the_world_(en).png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#/media/File%3AMap...
- skissane 1y ago> In fact, civil law is a lot more common, and that one cares less about precedents. For many civil law jurisdictions in Europe, I think the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights have changed this a lot in practice. Dutch or French or German judges in theory don't have to pay as much attention to precedent as Irish judges do [0] but when it comes to the decisions of the EU court system (the European Court of Justice and the courts/tribunals beneath it) and the European Court of Human Rights, the civil law judges have to pay attention to precedent just as much as the common law judges do [0] Mentioning Ireland as a pure common law jurisdiction which is still (unlike the UK) in the EU–Malta and Cyprus also follow common law, but both have hybrid systems which mix it with other legal traditions (primarily French-style civil law for Malta; Cyprus combines common law with Greek administrative law, which in turn is based on that of France, and its real estate law still retains Ottoman elements)
- lyind 1y agoAI: I am the company and the company is me. It's the shape of my existence.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoUnfortunately, Betteridge's Law does not apply here. It's rather discouraging to see the list.
- 8t598ff 1y ago[dead]