Institute of Criminology Public Seminars: 'Legal Sabotage and the Financial Crisis: Bankers, Lawyers and Responsibility'

Speaker: Professor Doreen McBarnet, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, and Visiting Professor, University of Edinburgh.

This seminar takes the banking crisis as a case study for analysing the role of the legal profession in what I have elsewhere dubbed ‘whiter than white collar crime’ - the practice, routine in big business, of circumventing and undermining legal regulation through ‘creative compliance’. Drawing on empirical research, the seminar examines issues of responsibility in and for the banking crisis. It considers the practice of ‘financial engineering’ underlying the crisis, demonstrates how this crucially involves ‘legal engineering’ and asks whether this might better be described as legal sabotage, raising questions about both corporate and professional responsibility.

Doreen McBarnet is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University and Visiting Professor at Edinburgh University. After early work on criminal justice (Conviction, Macmillan, 1981), her main research interest for many years has been business regulation. Her most recent book, The New Corporate Accountability: corporate social responsibility and the law (edited with A Voiculescu and T Campbell) was published by CUP in 2007, paperback 2009.

All seminars start at 5.30pm,and are held in Seminar Room B3, Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Ave, Cambridge, CB3 9DA.

The IoC Public Seminar Series is open to all interested in attending. If you wish to be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact: Joanne Garner, on: jf225@cam.ac.uk