Lying, Cheating, and Stealing

A Moral Theory of White-Collar Crime
Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-19-922580-4
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 312 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 471 g

The picture of crime that dominates the popular imagination is one of unambiguous wrong-doing - manifestly harmful acts that are clearly worthy of condemnation. The accompanying picture of the criminal - the thief, the murderer - is a picture of society's failures - to be cast out and re-integrated through a process of punishment and penance. Our understanding of white-collar crime, by contrast, is pervaded by moral and imaginative ambiguity. Such crimes are committed by society's success stories, by the rich and the powerful, and frequently have no visible victim at their root. The problem of marrying these disparate pictures has led to a confusion of the boundaries of white-collar crime. How is it possible to distinguish criminal fraud from mere lawful "puffing", tax evasion from "tax avoidance", insider trading from "savvy investing", obstruction of justice from "zealous advocacy", bribery from "log rolling", and extortion from "hard bargaining"? How should we, as scholars and students, lawyers and judges, law enforcement officials and the general public, distinguish the lawful from the unlawful, the civil from the criminal?

In the first in-depth study of its kind, Stuart Green exposes the ambiguities and uncertainties that pervade the white-collar crimes, and offers an approach to their solution. Drawing on recent cases involving such figures as Martha Stewart, Bill Clinton, Tom DeLay, Scooter Libby, Jeffrey Archer, Enron's Kenneth Lay and Andrew Fastow, and the Arthur Anderson accounting firm, Green weaves together disparate threads of the criminal code to reveal a complex and fascinating web of moral insights about the nature of guilt and innocence and what, fundamentally, constitutes conduct worthy of punishment by criminal sanction.

Green argues that white-collar crime is best understood through a framework of everyday moral concepts that include not only lying, cheating and stealing, but also coercion, exploitation, disloyalty, promise-breaking, disobediance, and other forms of deception. In the process, he reveals the essentially moral fabric underlying the legal category of white-collar crime.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Green, Stuart P.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Strafrecht Allgemeiner Teil
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Rechtswissenschaften Strafrecht Kriminologie, Strafverfolgung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface

- Introduction

- I Getting Started

- The Meaning of 'White Collar Crime'

- Some Generalizations About the Moral Content of White Collar Crime

- A Three-Part Framework for Analysis

- II Defining Moral Wrongfulness

- Cheating

- Deception

- Stealing

- Coercion and Expoitation

- Disloyalty

- Promise-Breaking

- Disobediance

- A Concluding Thought on Moral Wrongfulness

- III Finding the Moral Content of White Collar Offenses

- Perjury

- Fraud

- False Statements

- Obstruction of Justice

- Bribery

- Extortion and Blackmail

- Insider Trading

- Tax Evasion

- Regulatory Offenses

- Conclusions

Über Autor(innen)

Stuart Green is Professor of Law and Justice Nathan L. Jacobs Scholar, Rutgers School of Law, Newark. A graduate of Yale Law School, he has served as a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in the United Kingdom and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He is co-editor, along with R.A. Duff, of Defining Crimes: Essays on the Special Part of the Criminal Law, published by OUP in 2005.