In Thailand, the concept of corporate criminal liability is commonly identified with significant theoretical and practical uncertainties. Only limited attention, however, has been devoted to the notion's historical roots in English legal transfers. This article examines the relevant legislation, court cases, academic literature, and other records. It carves out the continuous English influence on Thai corporate crime doctrine and highlights the legal irritation that occurred along the way. It argues that irritation was not automatic but driven by the Supreme Court, whose choices were shaped by decades of English impact on Thai legal education and practice. The article thereby highlights the dynamics between legal transfers and local drivers of legal development. It expands the growing research on the continued relevance of English law in Thailand and concludes with an outlook on the future of Thai corporate crime doctrine.

Criminal offenses committed by legal persons or associations of individuals can only be punished in Germany with a regulatory fine under the German Act on Regulatory Offenses (Gesetz über Ordnungswidrigkeiten; OWiG). As the current governing parties (2017–2021)—the CDU, the CSU and the SPD—did not deem this to be an appropriate response to corporate misconduct, the Act to Strengthen the Integrity in the Economy (Gesetz zur Stärkung der Integrität in der Wirtschaft) was set to introduce the Corporate Sanctions Act (Verbandssanktionengesetz; VerSanG), which would have provided a new framework for the punishment of unlawful corporate actions. This legislative project, however, collapsed in the summer of 2021 following years of work. After a brief introduction to the development of corporate criminal liability in Germany, this article outlines the current legal situation under the OWiG before presenting the development and the main contents of the Government Draft of the VerSanG. Subsequently, a more in-depth review of specific—particularly controversial—regulations is provided, which addresses and analyzes the criticism that has been voiced with regard to these provisions. Lastly, the failure of the draft bill, the prospective developments, and the continuing relevance of the Government Draft are considered.

International anticorruption treaties create an almost universal requirement that States sanction legal persons for the crime of foreign bribery. However, the vast majority of corporate foreign bribery cases are ‘settled’ between governments and firms. Analysing key anticorruption instruments and treaty body reports, it appears there is a dearth of express rules on settlements in international law but a qualified implicit endorsement of domestic settlement laws and practices. The international regime is investigated in terms of its move towards common standards for the use of settlements, and whether recommendations are consistent with stated objectives. The analysis discloses an irony: States and international organisations fail to clearly articulate their expectations on settlements, while calling for transparent, effective and predictable domestic settlement rules.

This article deals with the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. In particular it analyzes the legal issues arising from the jurisdiction of the court’s proposed International Criminal Law Section over corporations. After underlining the historic opportunity represented by this initiative, the author points out a number of challenges that will necessarily arise when the court begins to operate. These problems are mainly related to the fact that criminal law has developed around the criminal liability of natural persons. Overcoming these challenges will require rethinking how to apply many of the basic principles that traditional criminal law has, until now, taken for granted.

Scholars addressing the moral status of corporations are motivated by a pair of conflicting anxieties: If corporations are not moral agents, we will be unable to blame them for their wrongs. But if corporations are moral agents, we will have to recognize corporate moral rights, and the legal rights that flow therefrom. In early and under-appreciated work, Tom Donaldson sought to allay both concerns at once: Corporations, he argued, are not moral persons, and so are not eligible for many of the rights that persons enjoy; but they are moral agents, and so ought to bear responsibility in many of the ways that persons do. This article offers a sympathetic critique of the Donaldsonian strategy. I argue that, as it has been elaborated, the strategy necessarily fails. Nonetheless the strategy embodies a worthy aim and so I seek to provide an alternative way to vindicate it.