Hester Prynne Sanction :: essays research papers

Hester Prynne SanctionThe persistent issue of corporate penalisement has been the proverbialthorn in the side of many people throughout history. Corporations claim causedmany people huge amounts of both physical and emotional trouble due to instances ofimproper mechanical brinytenance, ignorance towards the environment, and themanufacture of life threatening products. The main problem that lies as anobstacle in front of prosecutors of these messs is, who do they punish?The Lord Chancellor of England questioned, Did you ever expect a corporation to read a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?Countless victims throughout history have been perplexed to come up with asolution to answer the Chancellors question. How give the axe people throw a corporationin jail, or have them compensate for their immeasurable losings? In his work TheHester Prynne Sanction, Peter French analyses ways in which the courts canchange how they punish corporations more eff ectively. This essay will take acritical look at Frenchs solution, examining if it is an effective and morallyjustified behavior of punishing corporations.In our society, retributive ideals have been implanted in us, as thefamous biblical eye for an eye concept seems to be societys bearing with whichwe punish criminals. This is an interesting case though, because corporationsdont simply have one individualist they can place the blame upon. Rather, they arecomprised of hundreds or even thousands of people, and therefrom there is noextensive punishment prosecutors can place upon everybody who is busy by acorporation. In a famous case in Indiana involving Ford Pinto whose costbenefit analysis regarding the redesign of the foul up tank on the Pinto cost aperson his life. The firm end up paying $200,000, but how can you place a set on human life? And furthermore, who can you go after for retaliation? Theengineer who drew up the plans? The CEO who approved the change? Or even theFa ctory worker who placed the new tank in the car? None of them, according tothe current laws, writes French. The idea that a corporation can pay a courtfine or a set sum to the relatives of its victim in a homicide case, andtherefore right its guilt is, however, regarded by many people as a dreadfulaffront to justice. Very few of these cases can be directly conjugate toindividual negligence or intentional recklessness, and the fines can easily bewritten off as business expenses. The corporations usually recover fines promptlyby means of higher prices. This poses a major problem for society, because the