Sharing the Blame: The Law and Morality of Punishing Collective Entities
BLS is having a great symposium that bears directly on infolaw issues such as cyber-harassment, defamation, illicit file-sharing, and so forth. My friends Mike Cahill and Miriam Baer are co-hosting, and my friend Peter Henning is a panelist in the afternoon. Best of all, it’s free!
When: Friday, February 5, 2010, 9:00AM — 4:15PM
Where: Subotnick Center, Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, NY
This Symposium will discuss the nature, ethics, and law of imposing punishment on collective entities. Does it make sense to impose blame on a group as a group, as opposed to its individual members? Even if blame is appropriate, how do we decide the proper form and amount of punishment? How do we even conceive of a group as having its own independent existence or identity? The answers to these questions have significant implications for the scope and enforcement of criminal law. Over the course of several panels, the Symposium will seek to derive broad general insights from various academic disciplines and will consider the practical legal applications of those findings. It will address the psychological processes that lead people to treat groups as having independent existence, and the moral and philosophical consequences of doing so. Later discussion will apply these lessons to the specific legal context of corporate crime.
Symposium Co-Chairs
Brooklyn Law School Professors Michael T. Cahill and Miriam H. Baer have organized this symposium.
See the brochure for a list of panelists / speakers, and for schedule information.