CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

Georgetown University to Host Corporate Crime Conference
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 5, January 23, 2007

Georgetown Business Ethics Institute will host a corporate crime conference March 15, 2007 at the Georgetown Law Center in Washington, D.C.

The driving force behind the conference – Georgetown Business School Professor John Hasnas.

You’ll remember Hasnas from the interview we conducted with him last year in which he put forth his view that corporations should never be prosecuted for corporate crime – ever.

No matter the crime.

No matter the corporation.

Hasnas wants to do away with corporate criminal liability.

If there is a crime committed by someone within the corporation, criminally prosecute the individual, he says.

But a corporation can’t commit a crime and should not be criminally prosecuted.

(See "Interview with John Hasnas," 20 Corporate Crime Reporter 27(11), July 3, 2006, print edition only.)

The title of the March 15th conference – Corporate Criminality: Legal, Ethical, and Managerial Implications.

And while hosted by the Georgetown Business Ethics Institute, the conference is being co-sponsored by a gaggle of groups that have been working to undermine or eliminate corporate criminal liability and prosecution – including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Heritage Foundation, and the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform.

Panels will include: “Why Punish?”; “Regulation through Criminalization,” “The Challenge of Cooperation,” and “Solutions.”

George Brenkert, director of the Georgetown Business Ethics Institute, said that while the organizers have a point of view on the subject, there was no “ideological litmus test” for choosing panelists.

“We chose the best people we could find in the field,” Brenkert said.

Brenkert is the author of a soon to be published book titled “Ethics in Marketing,” (Blackwell, 2007).

Brenkert said that the conference will be free and open to the public, although there may be a charge for lunch. A luncheon speaker has yet to be confirmed.

Panelists will include: Pamela Bucy (University of Alabama School of Law), Alan Strudler and William Laufer (the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), Preet Bharara (Senate Judiciary Committee), Christine Hurt (the University of Illinois College of Law), Craig Lerner (George Mason University School of Law), Moin Yahya (the University of Alberta School of Law), Geraldine Szott Moohr (the University of Houston School of Law), Patrick Gnazzo (Chief Compliance Officer at Computer Associates, Inc.), Julie O’Sullivan (the Georgetown Law Center), Michael Elston (the Office of the Deputy Attorney General), George Terwilliger (White & Case, LLP in Washington, DC), and Sara Sun Beale (Duke University School of Law).

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