Rethinking the concept of vicarious criminal liability

Abstract

The modern criminal law is based upon four key principles: the principle of legality, necessity of committing the act, fault principle and the principle of personal criminal responsibility. In fact, these principles have been arisen to achieve justice in the realm of criminal law. According to the last principle, everyone is responsible only for behavior that is personally committed and no one can be taken to task for other’s behavior. However, a new category called “vicarious criminal liability " has been raised in modern criminal law which seems to contradict with the last principle. Some lawyers arguing that the issue is an exception to the principle of personal criminal responsibility have tried to defend it. The basis of this view is that they were mistaken in understanding the concept of “vicarious criminal liability “. Such mistake in conceptology has given rise to the new mistake on the scope of this type of criminal responsibility. In this article, explaining the common and erroneous interpretation of the concept, we have tried to draw the real concept and scope of this type of criminal responsibility.

Keywords

• vicarious criminal liability
• principle of personal criminal liability
• fault
• representation
• responsibility assignment