Can the Law cope with Corporate Crime? How do states go about investigating, prosecuting and sentencing companies that cause serious harm? Do laws have any effect on corporate behaviour? \n\nThe Network on Developments in Corporate Criminal Liability aims to enhance our knowledge and understanding of how states deal with corporate misconduct by bringing together international scholars from different disciplines to compile, compare and critically analyse current laws on Corporate Criminal Liability. Corporate wrongdoing has been tackled variously by economists, accountants, sociologists, criminologists, lawyers and human rights advocates. However, it is evident that each of these disciplines can benefit from increased exposure to the ideas and research of the other disciplines. Our purpose therefore is to create a multi-disciplinary and global network of scholars who can pool their expertise to produce a better understanding of the causes of corporate wrongdoing and how it can be addressed through law.\n\nRecent events have heightened public awareness of the enormous harm that can result from flawed risk management by companies. The damage may be economic, as evidenced by the current crisis in the banking industry and the downfall of such previously well-regarded companies as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Enron, Parmalat, and Worldcom; or it may involve serious injury and even loss of life, as occurred in the crash of the Concorde in France, the capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise, and rail crashes at Southall, Paddington, Hatfield, and Potters Bar in the UK. \n\nFailed prosecutions (and the failure to bring prosecutions because of anticipated problems of proof) have highlighted the inadequacy of traditional criminal law doctrines for coping with corporate wrongdoing. Legal concepts such as actus reus, mens rea, and causation, constructed with natural persons in mind, do not easily lend themselves to fictional entities such as companies. \n\nMany states, in response to the lack of effective regulatory mechanisms or the perceived inadequacies of existing laws, have enacted new statutes. These laws differ widely in approach from an across-the board criminal liability to administrative sanctions only. A key objective of the Network will be to assess the impact of these laws on corporate behaviour by determining how the laws are enforced and by whom (the police, a regulatory agency, or a specialist agency such as the Serious Fraud Office); how violations are dealt with by the authorities, the factors that influence decisions to bring criminal prosecutions; and the sanctions available to be imposed on companies, and executives and directors found to have promoted or sanctioned their company's offence, following a criminal conviction, as well as the extent to which these sanctions are applied in practice.\n\nAs the business community becomes more familiar with laws imposing corporate criminal liability, more and more companies can be expected to establish internal compliance departments to avoid violations. The end result may be a shift from the external enforcement of corporate criminal liability through regulatory agencies and the police to internal self-regulation. But is self-regulation the solution, and what are the alternatives? \n\nWe will disseminate the results of the research as widely as possible through thematic papers, workshops, conferences, and the publication of books, articles, and occasional papers. We will also establish a website, regularly updated, where new developments in the area, as well as contibutions from persons outside of the network, can be presented and made available. These activities will enhance the impact of the research and also ensure full engagement with a wide audience. The Network will be of interest to members of the business and legal communities, companies, public interest groups, NGOs, legislative bodies, academics, students and members of the public.

The project will explore the role of law in economic development in the four 'rising powers' of China, Russia, India and Brazil. For over a decade, with the encouragement of the World Bank and western governments, developing countries have adopted programmes of legal and financial reform combining privatisation of state-owned banks and enterprises with the enactment of enhanced legal protections for shareholders and creditors. These reform initiatives were supported by research which suggested that the legal framework governing corporate governance and financial markets had a pivotal role to play in creating the conditions for economic growth in low and middle-income countries. More recently, an emerging body of empirical work, based on case studies of emerging markets including those of the 'rising powers', suggests that law-centred reforms have been irrelevant or counter-productive. Formal legal institutions, it is suggested, crowd out economic cooperation based on trust, and obstruct the developmental role of the activist state. The example of China is often cited in this regard. China's rapid economic growth has been associated with a continuing role for informal business networks and with the active involvement of state institutions at both local and central level. China's case also demonstrates the advantages of sequencing, with partial privatization of state-owned enterprises proceeding alongside the growth of stock markets and the development of legal institutions. In Russia, by contrast, the mass privatisation of the early 1990s occurred before legal institutions had had time to mature. A 'self-enforcing' corporate law model, developed along western lines, failed to generate liquid and transparent capital markets. Since the late 1990s, Russia has seen a reconcentration of economic power in the hands of the state and of integrated financial and industrial enterprise groups. While these two cases are instructive on the issue of sequencing, drawing wider lessons from them on the role of law in development is, however, not straightforward. China's recent experience demonstrates the value of a developing legal framework in overcoming limits to growth in an informal, trust-based economy, while Russia is actively seeking to put in place the necessary legal and regulatory structures for market-based financial development. In Brazil, the example of the Novo Mercado, a new stock market segment which has attracted a large number of high-tech IPOs, suggests that a strategy of allowing firms to opt into a shareholder-rights based regulatory regime can work in promoting flows of equity finance in an emerging market context. In India, too, there is some evidence that recent corporate governance reforms have led to greater transparency on the part of listed firms and to increased investor confidence, although critics of the reform process argue that it has not gone far enough. The picture emerging from these experiences is one in which formal and informal institutions do not necessarily operate in tension. Rather, they may complement each other in providing the foundations for sustainable economic growth and societal development. Our research will explore this process through a combination of quantitative analysis of macro and micro-level data and extensive field work in the countries concerned. Using these multiple methods, we will arrive at a richer and more nuanced picture of the role of the legal system in economic development than has so far been obtained. The work will provide a clearer understanding of the institutional barriers to growth in emerging markets and of the role of legal and financial reforms in overcoming them. It will be of considerable interest to policy-makers in international financial institutions and national-level governments and to a range of private-sector actors including industrial, financial and legal service firms with interests in the economies of the rising powers.

Machine learning (ML) systems are increasingly being deployed across society, in ways that affect many lives. We must ensure that there are good reasons for us to trust their use. That is, as Baroness Onora O'Neill has said, we should aim for reliable measures of trustworthiness. Three key measures are: Fairness - measuring and mitigating undesirable bias against individuals or subgroups; Transparency/interpretability/explainability - improving our understanding of how ML systems work in real-world applications; and Robustness - aiming for reliably good performance even when a system encounters different settings from those in which it was trained. This fellowship will advance work on key technical underpinnings of fairness, transparency and robustness of ML systems, and develop timely key applications which work at scale in real world health and criminal justice settings, focusing on interpretability and robustness of medical imaging diagnosis systems, and criminal recidivism prediction. The project will connect with industry, social scientists, ethicists, lawyers, policy makers, stakeholders and the broader public, aiming for two-way engagement - to listen carefully to needs and concerns in order to build the right tools, and in turn to inform policy, users and the public in order to maximise beneficial impacts for society. This work is of key national importance for the core UK strategy of being a world leader in safe and ethical AI. As the Prime Minister said in his first speech to the UN, "Can these algorithms be trusted with our lives and our hopes?" If we get this right, we will help ensure fair, transparent benefits across society while protecting citizens from harm, and avoid the potential for a public backlash against AI developments. Without trustworthiness, people will have reason to be afraid of new ML technologies, presenting a barrier to responsible innovation. Trustworthiness removes frictions preventing people from embracing new systems, with great potential to spur economic growth and prosperity in the UK, while delivering equitable benefits for society. Trustworthy ML is a key component of Responsible AI - just announced as one of four key themes of the new Global Partnership on AI. Further, this work is needed urgently - ML systems are already being deployed in ways which impact many lives. In particular, healthcare and criminal justice are crucial areas with timely potential to benefit from new technology to improve outcomes, consistency and efficiency, yet there are important ethical concerns which this work will address. The current Covid-19 pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter movement, indicate the urgency of these pressing issues.

This document presents the case for a DTC at Lancaster University, targeting the Digital Economy priority area. Recent government thinking (as witnessed by the Sainsbury, Cox and Denham reviews) highlights the crucial role of innovation and its importance for the future health of the UK economy (including the Digital Economy). We rise to this challenge by proposing a world class, cross-disciplinary and user-centric DTC which places innovation at the heart of its curriculum and ethos. We propose to go beyond traditional multi-disciplinary approaches by seeking a creative fusion between three key disciplines, namely computer science, management and design. The emphasis is on producing a new breed of innovative people who understand and are able to advance the state of the art in technical, design and business innovation (exploring the possible, desirable and feasible). We further propose to align the Centre closely with the needs and goals of industrial producers and consumers of digital innovation (user focus) to ensure the relevance of the PhD programme and to encourage technology transfer/ early adoption of the emerging ideas and knowledge exchange. The DTC will build on the strengths of the InfoLab21 initiative, a recognised leader in technology transfer strategies, in order to seek more valuable and viable technical, social and economic pathways from the laboratory to organisational end-users and producers. The bid also builds on existing support including a Marie Curie Training Network in Creative Design/ Innovation. The long term vision of the centre is to achieve sustainability through partnerships between the university and organisational and customer end users.Key features of the bid include:- A deliberate and distinctive cross-cutting strategy of focusing on innovation as the core of the programme and rooting each PhD within thematic clusters to achieve the desired user focus;- The bringing together of three centres of excellence at Lancaster, namely the Management School, InfoLab21 and ImaginationLancaster with a focus on the resultant creative fusion;- Strong and dedicated leadership offered by 0.5 FTE Director (Prof. Gordon Blair) with significant experience of leadership and postgraduate training;- Location in a new customised space, with value added features such as the Imagination Studio, at a total cost of 10m, building on other investments in the 3 centres of excellence of 38.5m;- Programmes to engage with producers and users of digital innovations, thereby enhancing the student experience through sponsorship, industrial internships and international placements;- Significant focus on SME engagement and their business development, with associated structures and mechanisms becoming a focus for innovation in their own right;- The incorporation of a 12 month Masters of Research (MRes) featuring core modules on innovation, tailorable elements from the three centres, and also a number of ideas factories supporting a refinement from the cross-disciplinary thematic clusters and the definition of MRes and PhD projects; - A requirements-driven transferable skills programme within the 1+3 programme, targeted at industrial needs and capabilities, with the added feature of master classes from inspirational speakers including Sir Chris Bonnington;- Strong programme and quality assurance management, including an emphasis on recruitment.This is a distinctive, bold, imaginative and potentially high impact proposal which can contribute significantly to, and indeed shape, the emerging Digital Economy agenda through its focus on digital innovation. Significant additional contributions are also planned with respect to the Innovation Nation and in particular mechanisms and policies to stimulate innovative thinking in the economy and in society.