Corporations’ Wrongdoings at the Proof of the International Criminal Justice System: Mission Impossible or International Need?

For some time, the commission of atrocity crimes by corporate actors has been increasing at both national and international levels, also due to the changing balance of power between public and private actors. Their involvement in situations that to all intents and purposes can be defined as international crimes (eg, forced labour, slavery, serious environmental crimes, war crimes) is thus under public attention. Therefore, questions have been raised about the need of making corporations accountable at the International Criminal Court (ICC). This contribution is offering a double perspective for addressing this issue: first, several existing possibilities in the context of the ICC regulation for improving the individual responsibility of business leaders will be investigated. Then, the introduction of an explicit punishability clause for juridical persons in the Rome Statute, enlightening advantages as well as caveats of this approach, will be considered. Lastly, several alternatives to the ICC and, more generally, to criminal justice will be suggested, pointing out that the ICC system of justice may better remain an ‘extrema ultima ratio’.