Project description
New approach to anti-corruption criminal law
Transnational corporate corruption represents a rising criminal activity and a severe challenge for law enforcement prosecutors. Since 2000, anti-corruption norms have been increasing, leading to multi-jurisdictional criminal procedures due to the revamping of substantive criminal law, procedural criminal law and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. Within this framework, a hybrid model of corporate criminal justice has emerged, leading to a non-transparent and exclusive form of conducting criminal justice. The EU-funded RevACLaw project aspires to provide an inclusive conceptual scheme for the study of revamping strategies leading to the hybrid corporate criminal justice model and assess the impacts of such a model. The project will focus on France, Switzerland, the UK and the USA, using an innovative interdisciplinary method.
Objective
Fighting transnational corporate corruption is today a global task, resulting in an increase in criminalisation. However, when it comes to law enforcement, prosecutors face major problems: fact-finding is hampered and gathering evidence from foreign jurisdictions by way of traditional mutual legal assistance is arduous, if not impossible. Despite these major difficulties, since 2000 the enforcement of anti-corruption norms has flourished, resulting in multi-jurisdictional criminal procedures. This change is due to the revamping of strategies in three major fields of law (substantive criminal law, procedural criminal law, mutual legal assistance in criminal matters), and the resulting cross-cutting dynamics. A hybrid model of corporate criminal justice has emerged, which was unthinkable in the past and still is in almost any other field of criminal justice. This heretofore insufficiently studied model has led to a new, opaque, and exclusive way of conducting criminal justice. RevACLAW’s ambitious objective is to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of revamping strategies, leading to a hybrid corporate criminal justice model, as well as the consequences resulting from such a mdoel. RevACLAW will focus on four jurisdictions (France, Switzerland, USA, and the UK), and its objectives are the following: (A) unveiling the revamping strategies and how they interact in the three fields of law mentioned, and conceptualising this new way of conducting justice as a social practice, (B) delivering both a theoretical and empirical analysis of the accessibility of the resulting settlements, and (C) analysing case-making and the occurring narratives of corporate corruption and anticorruption law enforcement. These objectives will be achieved by a novel interdisciplinary approach, including both legal and empirical research. This project will impact the fields of legal theory as well as the study of law and society with regard to a present-day phenomenon.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
2000 NEUCHATEL
Switzerland