Article contents
Law, Ideology and Corporate Crime: A Critique of Instrumentalism*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2014
Abstract
The paper explores the limitations of class instrumentalist analyses of law in accounting for the failure of the criminal justice system to control corporate crime. The first part of the paper examines current theoretical perspectives in Canadian corporate crime research, with particular emphasis on the class instrumentalist analyses of law which predominate in the literature. The remainder of the paper seeks to develop a critical analysis of corporate crime which avoids the reductionism of such class instrumentalist analyses. In particular, it is argued that attempts to theorize the failure of the criminal justice system to respond to corporate crime require investigation not only of external factors influencing the enactment and enforcement of legislation, but also of the manner in which ideological discourses are articulated through the form and content of criminal law in such a way as to reproduce the popular consent for the differential treatment of suite and street crime. Failure to problematize the ideological role of criminal law in legitimating the differential treatment of corporate and street crime is likely to undermine attempts to make corporate offenders more accountable for their illegal behaviour by further criminalizing certain types of corporate behaviour.
Résumé
Cette communication explore les limites des analyses du droit reposant sur l'instrumentalisme de classe et voulant rendre compte de l'incapacité du système de justice criminelle de contrôler le crime des sociétés. La première partie examine les perspectives théoriques des recherches canadiennes actuelles sur les crimes des sociétés, en mettant l'accent sur les analyses dominantes qui reposent sur l'instrumentalisme de classe. Le reste de la communication cherche à élaborer une analyse critique du crime des les sociétés qui évite le réductionnisme de ce genre d'analyses. En particulier, on soutient que pour tenter de théoriser l'incapacité du système de justice criminelle de répondre au problème du crime des sociétés il faut étudier non seulement les facteurs externes influant sur l'adoption et l'application de la législation mais aussi la façon dont les discours idéologiques sont articulés dans la forme et le contenu du droit criminel pour reproduire un consentement populaire au traitement différentiel des crimes des sociétés par rapport aux crimes au sein de la population en général. Le fait de ne pas problématiser le rôle idéologique du droit criminel dans la légitimation de ce traitement différentiel risque de rendre largement inefficace toute tentative d'accroître la responsabilité devant les tribunaux des auteurs de crimes au niveau des sociétés au moyen d'une plus grande criminalisation de certains types de comportement.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 4 , 1989 , pp. 39 - 75
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 1989
References
Notes
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116. Stone, Where the Law Ends; Sargent, “Legal Individualism and Corporate Accountability.”
117. Cullen, F.T., Maakestad, W.J. and Cavendar, G., “The Ford Pinto Case and Beyond: Corporate Crime, Moral Boundaries, and the Criminal Sanction,” in Hochstedler, E. (ed.), Corporations as Criminals (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984)Google Scholar; Swigert, V.L. and Farell, R., “Corporate Homicide: Definitional Processes in the Creation of Deviance,” Law and Society Review 15 (1981), 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kramer, “Corporate Crime.”
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137. Carson, “Some Sociological Aspects of Strict Liability and Enforcement of Factory Legislation”; Carson, “The Conventionalization of Early Factory Crime”; Carson, “The Institutionalization of Ambiguity”; Paulus, I., “Strict Liability: Its Place in Public Welfare Offences,” Criminal Law Quarterly 20 (1978), 445Google Scholar.
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143. This was explicitly made clear by the judgment of Dickson J. in R. v. Sault Ste. Marie (1978), 40 C.C.C. (2d) 353, [1978] 2 S.C.R. 1299 (S.C.C.), which articulated a three tiered hierarchy of offences based on the mental element required for conviction, with those requiring proof of mens rea at the top, and absolute liability offences at the bottom. See also Reference re Section 94(2) of the B.C. Motor Vehicle Act (1985), 13 C.C.C. (3d) 289, [1985] 2 S.C.R. 486 (S.C.C.), in which a majority of the Supreme Court held that legislative creation of absolute liability offences under federal or provincial regulatory statues contravenes s. 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in so far as imposition of liability for such an offence has the potential to deprive a person of life, liberty or security of the person. Consequently, the enactment of absolute liability offences which could result in the imprisonment of an accused person, even if imprisonment is not mandatory, violates the principles of fundamental justice under s. 7 of the Charter, and can only be constitutional if the appropriate government authorities establish under s. 1 of the Charter that such a deprivation of liberty is a justified reasonable limit in a free and democratic society.
144. Paulus, “Strict Liability”; Sargent, “Legal Individualism and Corporate Accountability.”
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