The Applicability of Law no. 9.605/98 in Relation to Legal Entities

Abstract

The present work intend to demonstrate that, after the advent of the current Federal Constitution and Law 9,605/98, became possible to incriminate the legal entity responsible for ambient crimes committed in Brazil. This work also aims to demonstrate that such responsabilization does not represent a breaking of the conquests and historical guarantees gotten by the Criminal Law, such as the principle of penalties  personality. Recognizing that the great companies represent social, economic and politics forces of the modern life and considering that the legal order of any society can be injured when these companies infringe the law, it intends to show that only by the elaboration of a “new Criminal Law” it will be possible to efficiently restrain the infractions committed by the collective beings. This “new Criminal Law” is based in the functionalism doctrine of the action that considers the Laws as an instrument destined to guarantee the functionality and the effectiveness of the social system and its subsystems. In synthesis, the functionalism doctrine search to awake the idea that the formation of the legal-criminal system can not be associated to the ontology reality, having yes to be guided by the purposes of the Criminal Law. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that this doctrine of the action, adopted with certainty by the Brazilian Criminal Code by the time of it elaboration, is not configured as obstacle for the application of penalty to the moral beings.