Can Corporations Experience Duress? An Examination of Emotion-Based Excuses and Group Agents

Abstract

This article considers the question of whether corporate entities can benefit from the criminal-law defence of duress. The excuse of duress is accorded in recognition of the defendant’s extreme fear of a threatened consequence, and it is unclear whether corporate entities—as distinct from their members—can experience fear. Many proponents of corporate rationality deny that corporations can have emotional states. I argue that corporations can experience the fear that is necessary to ground a claim of duress, but that the law should only allow fear to excuse coerced corporate action in a narrow set of circumstances.