Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020) Crime as Cognitive Constraint relationship between an individual right holder and the state.” 188 This consequently “leaves unattended or enhanced the powers and felt entitlements of private actors.” 189 International criminal law is no different; it seeks a different goal through similar means. The dominant and fashionable vocabulary for thinking about justice now is to prosecute the persons most responsible. Mass atrocity crimes are attributed to a “few bad individual perpetrators, even monsters,” 190 with the effect of obscuring structural causes, political contexts, and the “ideological content” of such crimes. 191 In framing justice in terms of prosecution and individual agency, criminal law overemphasizes the role of individual actors and effectively decontextualizes the event. This has led to a description of international criminal law’s liberal features as reductionist. 192 Expanding the “toolbox” to include legal or juridical persons within the scope of the ICC’s personal jurisdiction conforms to this paradigm shift. 193 Corporate criminal liability under international law feeds the behemoth. In this section, I will demonstrate how this can limit our thinking of harm and operate as a cognitive constraint in evaluating corporate involvement in mass atrocity contexts. A. Corporate criminal liability Corporate executives can be prosecuted under international criminal law. There is no contest here. The Nuremberg Tribunal, for instance, prosecuted the officers and directors of companies complicit in the Nazi regime. 194 In the ICC’s Ruto and Sang case, Sang was a 188. Id. at 16. 189. Id. at 11. 190. Karen Engle, Mapping the Shift: Human Rights and Criminal Law, 112 PROC. ASIL ANN. MEETING 84, 85 (2018) [hereinafter Mapping the Shift]; Mégret, supra note 180, at ¶ 18 (noting that one of the promises of international criminal law is “more systematic accountability” compared to the state-based, civil sanctions and dispute settlement mechanism, as well as the “ability to differentiate ‘bad apples’ (individuals) and societal structures that is presented as more modern and discriminating”). 191. Anti-Impunity and the Turn to Criminal Law, supra note 180, at 1121. See also Mapping the Shift, supra note 190, at 85; Immi Tallgren, The Sensibility and Sense of International Criminal Law, 13 EUR. J. INT’L L. 561, 594 (2002). 192. Carsten Stahn, Liberals vs. Romantics: Challenges of an Emerging Corporate International Criminal Law, 50 CASE W. RES. J. INT’L L. 91, 98 n.31 (2018). 193. Regulating Corporations under International Law, supra note 185, at 740– 41. 194. For an overview, see Michael J. Kelly, Atrocities by Corporate Actors: A Historical Perspective, 50 CASE W. RES. J. INT’L L. 49 (2018). See also INT’L COMMISSION OF JURISTS, 2 CORPORATE COMPLICITY & LEGAL ACCOUNTABILITY: REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF 175