Imagine a world without corporate criminal law.

With only civil and administrative sanctions.

Would we be better off?

Some of the top corporate crime scholars in the world will get together at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C. October 22 and 23 to discuss the question.

“The symposium will generate new ideas about the value of applying criminal sanctions to collective entities,” says organizer Mihailis Diamantis, a Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. “Leading scholars representing diverse viewpoints will imagine criminal law without corporate liability and trace the possible implications of such a development.” 

“They will address whatever aspects of the question they believe to be most salient, including what would be lost or gained from successful abolition, whether civil and administrative sanctions can replace criminal punishment, and how to compare the experience of other countries that regulate corporations without the threat of criminal liability.” 

The original essays will be published in the Journal of Corporation Law. 

Participating scholars include: Jennifer Arlen (NYU), Miriam Baer (Brooklyn), John Braithwaite (ANU), Samuel Buell (Duke), John Coffee (Columbia), Susana Aires de Sousa (Coimbra), Mihailis Diamantis (Iowa), John Hasnas (Georgetown), Vikramaditya Khanna (Michigan), William Laufer (Wharton), Julie O’Sullivan (Georgetown), Stephen Smith (Notre Dame), Amy Sepinwall (Wharton) and W. Robert Thomas (Michigan).

The symposium will be hosted by Georgetown Law, with audience members participating via Zoom. 

(To join virtually, register at www.tinyurl.com/CorpCrimeEvent/.)

Co-sponsors for the event include the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Market Ethics and Wharton’s Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research.