Official bribery and commercial bribery

Stuart Green, Professor of Law and Justice at Rutgers University, New Jersey gives this lecture at The Australian National University entitled - Official Bribery and Commercial Bribery: Should They Be Distinguished? This video was recorded on the 15th of May 2012. He explored how Anglophone law has traditionally drawn a sharp distinction between bribes paid to government officials and bribes paid in the commercial context: the former has universally been regarded as a serious crime; the latter, often, not a crime at all. Recent legislative developments - most notably, enactment of the U.K.'s Bribery Act 2010 - suggest that the distinction between official and commercial bribery is much less sharp than it once was. Should acceptance of a bribe by a private employee be treated as a crime? Should it be treated as any less serious a crime than acceptance of a bribe by a government official? And what about the giving of a bribe to a private employee: how should that be treated in comparison to the giving of a bribe to a government official? In his presentation, Stuart explored some of the underlying conceptual issues.Professor Green's book Lying, Cheating, and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime received the National White-Collar Crime Center's Outstanding Publication Award and has been translated into several languages. His latest books are Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law (with co-editor R.A. Duff) and Thirteen Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age, which is scheduled to be published in early 2012. His current research focuses on "vice and crime."This TRIC Public Lecture will be based on a forthcoming chapter in the book: Jeremy Horder and Peter Alldridge (eds.), 'Modern Bribery Law: Comparative Perspectives' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)The Transnational Research Institute on Corruption (TRIC) was established in 2010 as a cross disciplinary Centre to bring together ANU expertise in the study of corruption. Its prime focus is research, though it will develop capacity in teaching about corruption and corruption prevention, as well as undertake technical assistance.