• business and human rights
• corporate crime
• corporate criminal liability
• corporate criminality
• international criminal law
• white-collar crime

The primary objective of the present thesis is to understand from a theoretic point of view whether private legal persons, such as multinational corporations, may be held liable for participation in crimes under international law. This question – which addresses an issue of utmost importance in the current academic debate at international level – challenges the main principles of both international and criminal law.
Indeed, as to public international law, a recognition of some form of direct responsibility of private legal persons requires a preliminary understanding of the consequences this might have on the principles of exclusive sovereignty and equality of States and of individual liability under international criminal law. This requires an evaluation of whether the traditional interpretation of these principles is consistent with the current status of the sources of law.
With regard to criminal law, the extension of criminal liability, from natural persons only, to juristic persons requires a reconsideration of the fundamental principles concerning attribution, culpability and causation, in order to adapt them to the specific nature of such entities. Indeed, some additional reflections on the issue of participation and modes of liability would be required as well.
Consequently, the present work will be divided in two parts. The objective of Part I will be to clarify, from the point of view of international law, whether private legal persons might be directly responsible for crimes. Thus, the first step will be to distinguish this issue from that of responsibility of public legal entities. Then, the analysis will focus on the history of the concept of corporate responsibility as it has evolved since the times of the Nuremberg trials. Ultimately, an overview of the more recent sources of international law addressing this issue will be given, including a comparative analysis of States’ domestic practice from different legal families. Thus, it will be possible to conclude whether corporate responsibility already amounts either to an international custom or at least to a general principle of law.
Part II will address the question whether corporate liability at international level should be criminal in its nature, by means of distinguishing the main features of criminal, civil and administrative liability. Once this preliminary question will be answered, the core aim of the second part will be that of determining what the substantive elements for making corporate entities criminally liable should be. This will involve the very concepts of criminal act, mens rea, causation, and punishment. The related criticalities will be addressed, in the attempt to find workable solutions from both a practical and theoretical point of view. Ultimately, such findings will be compared with the current status of the doctrine of modes of liability under international criminal law, in order to ascertain whether corporate liability would be consistent with this regime and what changes this may entail de jure condendo.
To face this challenge, the present work will strongly rely on the huge amount of contributes by some of the most highly qualified scholars to the current debate concerning the issue. The academic contribute to this subject is indeed extremely important in order to keep alive the attention on the topic, as this is one of the main ways to put States under pressure and urging them to take some further step towards an exhaustive regulation of corporate criminal liability.
Indeed, this is how civil society may contribute in transnational law-making. The enforcement of legal remedies, by States as well as by regional and international organizations, may be influenced through an horizontal process, made of initiatives by a number of non-governmental organizations and other private subjects. Indeed, in an historical moment in which the very concept of territory is losing its previous importance in the field of legal regulation of individual behaviours, the need to go beyond national standards and look for international cooperation is increasingly important even in the field of criminal law.