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Criminal Case (Tel Aviv) 59453-07-19 State of Israel v. Avi Motula - part 20

July 22, 2020
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She adds, at p. 84, regarding the punishment of the corporation:

"The aspiration to optimize the incriminating sanctions is based on the assumption that managers will be willing to break the law if it is beneficial for the company or for them.  Therefore, the imposition of a criminal sanction on the company, in parallel with the imposition of a criminal sanction on the organ, is supposed to deal with this difficulty.".

Mordechai Kremnitzer and Khaled Ganaim, "The Criminal Liability of a Corporation" in Sefer Shamgar, p. 33 (Part 2, 2003, hereinafter: Kremnitzer and Ganaim, Corporate Liability), discuss the importance of imposing criminal liability on corporations and punishing them (at p. 73):

"Corporations have an impact on the management of social life in general and economic life in particular.  There is a real concern that the legitimate goal in itself, of making profits, will motivate corporations to act to achieve this goal, even at the cost of violating the rules of law.  ....  Moreover, there are special considerations related to the nature of the corporation's activity and those who operate within it that justify punishing the corporation.  Committing offenses within the framework of a corporation is, more than once, the result of an atmosphere that encourages their committal... and even of the desire of the workers within the framework of the corporation to "excel" or to be liked or to promote the good of the corporation, and in this way also themselves.  In other words, not imposing criminal liability on a corporation may constitute an encouragement to commit criminal acts that benefit the corporation."

For more on the responsibility and punishment of corporations in criminal offenses, see:

John B.  McAdams, "The Appropriate Sanctions for Corporate Criminal Liability: An Eclectic Alternative", 46 U.  Cin.  L.  Rev., 989, 996 (1977); Morton J.  Horwitz, “Santa Clara Revisited:The Development of Corporate Theory” 88 W.  Va.  L.  Rev.  (1985); William W.  Bratton Jr.  “The New Economic Theory of the Firm: Critical Perspectives form History” 41 Stan.  L.  Rev.  1471 (1989); Sharona Hoffman, "Criminal Sanctions in Accidental Oil Spill Cases – Punishment without a Crime", 71 Neb.  L.  Rev.  1033 (1992); Vikramaditya S.  Khanna, "Corporate Criminal Liability: What.  Purpose Does It Serve?" 109 Harv.  L.  Rev.  1477, 1486 (1996); Ron Harris “The Transplantation of the Legal Discourse on Corporate Personality Theories: From Codification to British Political Pluralism and American Big Business” 63 Wash.  & Lee La.  Rev.  25 (2006); Lawrence E.  Mitchell “The Relevance of Corporate Theory to Corporate and Economic Development of the Legal Discourse on Corporate Personality Theories” 63 Washington and Lee L.  Rev., 1489 (2006); Phillip Petit, "Responsibility Incorporated", Ethics 171 (2007); Susanna K.  Ripken “Corporations are People Too: A Multi-Dimensional Approach to the Corporate Personhood Puzzle” 15 Ford.  J.  Corp.  & Fin.  L.  97, 117-118 (2009) and Amanda M.  Rose, "Public Enforcement: Criminal versus Civil" in Oxford handbook of Corporate Law and Governance, 946 (Jeffert N.  Gordon and Wolf-George Ringe, eds.  2018).

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