Why Punish Corporations for Their Employees’ Crimes?
Punishing corporations for crimes committed by their employees is not unlike the ritual sacrifice of inanimate objects under early English common law. One would think that after so many centuries, we would have made more progress in the rational administration of justice.
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LONDON – Under English common law from the eleventh century until 1846, an inanimate object or an animal that caused a person’s death would be forfeited, becoming what was referred to as a “deodand.” Thus, when William Swan fell into a well and drowned in Wigston, England in 1397, the coroner ordered the destruction of the well. Likewise, chattels that caused a person’s death were given to God or to his representative on Earth, the monarch.