Justice Is Mocked If An Important Law Is Unenforced

摘要

The 18th century Lord Chancellor, Baron Thurlow, said that companies could not be convicted of crimes. He said, 'Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?'. The process by which the law made companies responsible for culpable conduct causing death was a slow one. From the outset, the company as a district body was not liable for such a crime and neither were the shareholders. In 1911, Ambrose Bierce defined a company in his Devil's Dictionary as 'an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility'.