Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 52 (2020)
Crime as Cognitive Constraint
Tort’s regulatory function can resolve competing interests. In the BSR
report, for instance, one interviewee noted that there was generally
nothing wrong with Facebook’s Community Standards, the only
problem was its poor implementation. 251 In the words of another
interviewee: “We are not in the delete-Facebook camp… we desperately
want Facebook to succeed in Myanmar.” 252 This shows the nuanced role
that platforms – and corporations generally – play, and whose behavior
can be regulated by a tort mechanism that would delicately straddle
the excesses of these “new governors” with that of existing ones.
Further, through the adjudication of actual disputes, tort law can
function as a “useful supplement” and “learning and feedback
mechanism” to inform existing regulation. 253 Preliminary injunctive
relief can also manage risks posed by technology.
1.
Sanction and criminal law’s design
Imprisonment is criminal law’s defining feature. Criminal law’s
penalty – deprivation of liberty – explains its design. Fair trial rights,
a higher burden of proof to convict, a lower standard of proof to assert
a defense, the presumption of innocence, proving mens rea — these
guarantees are put in place to protect the individual from undue
incarceration. This rule applies to corporate officers and agents. If the
defendant is a corporation, the effect is not the same. Juridical persons
have “no soul to damn, no body to kick.” 254 In arguing for corporate
criminal liability, Kaeb proposes a mix of penalties that the ICC can
impose on corporations as an alternative: “closure of implicated
corporate units, general confiscation of all the company’s assets (rather
than the assets only associated with the criminal offense),” the
“corporate death penalty” – dissolution – and monitorship. 255 Domestic
legal systems presently allow corporate dissolution for violations that
are milder in scope than tortious involvement in Rome Statute acts.
Internationally, I.G. Farben was dissolved pursuant to Control Council
Law No. 9 as punishment for its involvement in the Holocaust. 256
251. BSR Report, supra note 211, at 26.
252. Id. at 24.
253. Morgan, supra note 249, at 536 (citing Mary Lyndon, Tort Law and
Technology, 12 YALE J. OF REG. 137, 157, 165 (1995)).
254. See John C. Coffee, Jr., “No Soul to Damn: No Body to Kick”: An
Unscandalized Inquiry Into the Problem of Corporate Punishment, 79
MICH. L. REV. 386, 386 (1981) (quoting the Lord Chancellor of England
and suggesting alternative criminal penalties that maximize the
corporation’s social system and the legal environment to rein in corporate
behavior).
255. Kaeb, supra note 196, at 390, 400.
256. Control Council Law No. 9: Providing for the Seizure of Property Owned
by I.G. Farbenindustrie and the Control Thereof, art. I, in 1 ENACTMENTS
186