Sara Sun Beale sympathizes with in- house lawyers’ gripes about the criminal justice system, but don’t expect her to push for eliminating corporate criminal liability. Beale, a Duke University law professor, argues that if companies commit crimes, society should punish them.
“Corporate counsel like to suggest that there’s something abnormal about corporate criminal liability,” Beale says, but “corporations wield extraordinary power, and can cause serious harm to individuals and to society as a whole.” In her view, “They ought to be held accountable, and we need the full range of legal tools to do that”—including prosecution.
