Guilty Corporate Minds: old and new approaches to regulating corporate (mis) conduct

A raft of Casino Royal Commissions has taught us that the regulation of corporate conduct is front page news across the country.

As regulators, we need to understand – and assess – the guilty corporate mind. We need to know whether corporate misconduct is accidental, mistaken, deliberate, knowing or dishonest. This question can affect every stage of enforcement: Whether we proceed informally, through administrative processes or through litigation; how we identify the breaches that have occurred; what we take into account when considering settlement and the terms of any penalties or remedial outcomes.

Recent events highlight that the law’s traditional approaches are notoriously ‘unfit for purpose’ when assessing the guilty corporate mind. The operation of the law sometimes makes it impossible to prove the corporate state of mind. And broader, statutory approaches still struggle to deal with devolved and automated corporate processes, where no one individual holds the requisite guilty state of mind.

Join our eminent panel to reflect on the learnings of the Casino Royal Commissions and discuss a new model of corporate responsibility, entitled ‘Systems Intentionality’ which seeks to improve how we regulate corporate misconduct.

• Facilitator: Rowena Park
• Presenter 1: Dr Elise Bant FAAL
• Presenter 2: Justice Ray Finkelstein AO KC

For further reading:

• Guilty Corporate Minds: Questions and Answers
• Systems of misconduct: Corporate culpability and statutory unconscionability
• Submission to Victorian Crown Royal Commission
• Submission to Robodebt Royal Commission
• Culpable Corporate Minds (2021)
• Catching the corporate conscience: a new model of “systems intentionality”
• ACCC v Google: Deterring misleading conduct in digital privacy policies
• Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and License: The Report