Economic Criminal Law

This book investigates the legitimacy of Economic Criminal Law. Initially, it examines the history of the intersection between criminal law and economy, aiming at finding a possible evolutionary trait. Then it defines what is meant by Economic Criminal Law, and whether it would be necessary and possible to subsume it to the protected interest theory. Subsequently it analyzes theories that intend to equate the administratisation of criminal law, highlighting the proposed administrative-punitive. Finally, the conclusion searches for the best legal construction of the rules for economic infractions, limiting the role of criminal law in this context.

The imperiousness of effective protection of the economic environment seems undeniable today. The structure of post-industrial capitalist system reveals, paradoxically, features unwanted by the existing mode of production, which the contemporary sociology understands as the reflexivity of risk society. In this sense, the economic agents undertake conduct detrimental to the conformation of the economic society, undermining the smooth functioning of the economy itself. In this context, the law, especially the criminal law, is used to try to head them off. It happens that such employment of legal and judicial branch clashes with their traditional boundaries, delineated since the Enlightenment. Complex economic behavior are criminally prohibited, in most cases through typifying proactive formulations, which are inconsistent and display as mere means of behavioral conformation, subject to administrative jurisdiction, which leads to the administrativization of the criminal law.