Law coursework on the English Legal system and corporate criminal liability

Law coursework on the English Legal System and Corporate Criminal Liability.

Question 1

a) The sources of the English legal system are:
• Case law is judge made law.
• Acts of Parliament creates a new law or changes an existing law. It is the most important source of law. Acts of Parliament are made by the Parliament, which consists of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
• Statutory Interpretation is the process by which judges interpret and apply acts of parliament. In order to help judges interpret statutes, there are several rules of interpretation, which include the literal rule, the golden rule, the mischief rule and the purposive approach. Additional materials to help interpret statues are internal aids and external aids.
• Delegated legislation allows the government to change the law without waiting for a new act of parliament to be passed. There are three forms of delegated legislation, which are, statutory instruments, Bye-laws and Orders in Council.
• European Law is binding in the English legal system and can be divided into primary legislation (treaties) and secondary legislation (regulations, directives and decisions).
• Equity is a set of rules that sit alongside the common law.
• Treaties are formal agreements between countries. However treaties does not become law in the UK unless it passes as an act of parliament.

b) It may be important for judges to interpret statutes because statutes are not always clear. When interpreting statutes, the judges have four basic approaches. Under the Literal rule, the best way to interpret the words in a statute is to use its ordinary and natural meaning. An example could be the case of R v Harris (1836). The defendant bit the victim’s nose and was not guilty because the victim did not use an instrument such as a knife, which, under the literal rule, the act of biting did not come within the meaning of ‘stab, cut or wound’. The golden rule is used, if the literal rule leads to absurdity. The courts can therefore give the statutes another meaning. An example could be the case of Re Sigsworth (1935). In this case, the court applied the golden rule because the application of the literal rule would have led to a repugnant result. Two more approaches to statutory interpretation are the mischief rule and purposive approach.

c) According to Section 3(1) of the human rights act, it requires that domestic legislation interpreted needs to be compatible with the European Convention rights. This affects statutory interpretation in the sense that the courts have to follow the rule of the European Court of human Rights. As seen in the case of Ghaidan v Godian-Mendoza (2004) where the House of Lords encouraged the courts to use s(3) to interpret statutes in accordance with the European convention.

d) Stare decisis in Latin translates as “to stand by decided matters”. The doctrine of stare decisis means that inferior courts must follow previous decisions made by superior courts on a particular case. The particular case is called precedent. Strengths of binding judicial precedent are certainty, flexibility and consistency. However binding judicial precedent could be complex, rigid, unpredictable, have illogical distinctions, it may be dependent on chance, have an undemocratic character and have a retrospective effect.

Question 2

a) The main exceptions to the general rule that a corporation can be held criminally liable are when the punishments available are physical, such as imprisonment. In addition, a corporation cannot be held liable in cases such as rape, bigamy, perjury or incest. Punishments that can be levied on corporations could be fines.

b) Since a criminal offence requires ‘Mens rea’ (a guilty mind) and ‘Actus reus’ (a guilty body) to be present when committing a crime, a company has neither a physical body nor a physical mind. This therefore becomes a problem, because the question that arises is who is to be blamed.

c) It is considered necessary and desirable for corporations to be held criminally for criminal wrongdoing in order to be fair to society. An individual or groups of people are the cause of criminal wrongdoing in a corporation. Letting corporations off a crime, is equivalent to letting an ordinary person off a crime.
In addition, holding corporations criminally for wrongdoing will ensure that corporations become more cautious in decisions/actions they make. If they are not charged for being criminally liable, they would simply ignore things such as health and safety rules because of interest or time wastage, knowing that at the end of the day, they would not be charged for criminal wrongdoing.

d) For Worchester Ski and Snow ltd to be liable for manslaughter, it must be proved that there was the presence of an Actus reus and a Mens rea. A corporation can be convicted of criminal offences through the application of the principle of identification. For Worchester Ski and Snow ltd to be convicted for the offence of manslaughter, liability must be found against an individual on the board of directors or senior management as of the explanations of Lord Dennings in the case of HL Bolton Co Ltd v PJ Graham And Sons Ltd [1957]. Worchester Ski and Snow ltd may be found liable on the grounds of vicarious liability. The fact that the board had limited the spending of managers, means they are directly responsible for the inadequacy of the jump, thereby may be liable for corporate manslaughter of Suzie. Also, the board of directors had never issued any directions as to safety or the level of supervision needed for the jumps. The general rule states that, an individual may only be liable for his actions, but an exception to the general rule states that, an individual may be found liable for a crime by merely breaching contractual obligations owed to another. The board of directors, owed a duty to their customers, and breached that duty when they omitted to stipulate fixed safety and supervision policies. In addition, the manager of the ski centre where Suzie died may be liable for negligent manslaughter because he/she also omitted to instruct his/her staff, to ensure safety. Overall, the board would most likely be found liable for manslaughter.