漫谈海洋污染的民事责任和刑事责任

简单介绍国际社会关于油轮溢油、燃油溢油及运输有毒有害物质致海洋污染损害的民事责任与赔偿方面的立法努力以及区域性组织等加强船源污染刑事责任方面的立法,认为对海洋污染实行更苛刻的民事责任制度,设立更高的赔偿责任限额或者干脆取消限额,进行更多的刑事立法等是不可取的,指出规制海洋污染必须体现国际性,并最大限度地避免区域性立法。     

Vicarious liability and criminal prosecutions for regulatory offences

The parameters of vicarious liability of corporations for the conduct of their employees, especially in the context of provisions that criminalise breaches of regulatory provisions, are complex. The decision of Bell J in ABC Developmental Learning Centres Pty Ltd v Wallace [2006] VSC 171 raises starkly the potential unfairness of an approach which converts criminal liability of corporations too readily into absolute liability, irrespective of the absence of any form of proven culpability. The author queries whether fault should not be brought back in some form to constitute a determinant of criminal liability for corporations.     

Repositioning the corporate criminal: comparing and contrasting corporate criminal liability in Canada and Finland

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, a number of states in the Global North have introduced laws aimed at holding corporations criminally liable. While there is an important literature examining these legal regimes there is a paucity of comparative work interrogating the different political struggles and processes leading to corporate criminal liability (CCL) legislation. This paper addresses this lacuna by comparing and contrasting the development of CCL in Canada and Finland. By scrutinizing the law reform processes in each jurisdiction, the paper documents how CCL emerged under different conjunctures in each country, yet were shaped similarly by hegemonic beliefs in the non-criminal status of corporation, the importance of advancing private enterprise and established jurisprudence. Of particular note are the ways in which dominant notions of legal individualism and the universal legal subject constrained legislative efforts to hold corporations criminally to account therein preventing corporate misconduct from being processed as “real” crimes.     

Gynaecological cytopathology and the search for perfection: civil liability and regulatory ramifications

The article analyses the potential for false negative and false positive results from Pap smear testing by gynaecological cytopathology laboratories. It also reviews case law in relation to the liability of general practitioners, gynaecologists, cytoscreeners and pathologists in respect of cervical cancer diagnoses. It argues that the concerns expressed in the 1990s about unfair findings of liability against cervical screeners have not been borne out, liability only having been found by the courts where culpable failure to adhere to the standards to be expected of professional behaviour has been established by probative evidence. It argues that the challenge for the future is for cytology screening to articulate definitively where the distinctions lie between acceptable and unacceptable error and for the medical profession and the legal profession to accommodate to the limitations of gynaecological cytopathology.