Sentencing white collar offenders is difficult in that the economic crimes committed clearly injured individuals, but the offenders do not present a physical threat to society. This Article questions the necessity of giving Draconian sentences, in some cases in excess of twenty-five years, to non-violent first offenders who commit white collar crimes. The attempts by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to achieve a neutral sentencing methodology, one that is class-blind, fails to respect the real differences presented by these offenders. As the term white-collar crime has sociological roots, it is advocated here that sociology needs to be a component in the sentencing of white collar offenders.

In the aftermath of corporate scandals and the establishment of the President's Corporate Fraud Task Force, the Department of Justice has moved with a new emphasis to curb corporate criminality. Congress has also imposed new legislation with stricter compliance and more stringent oversight to curtail corporate criminality. Corporations for the most part have met these new demands and instituted effective compliance programs to prevent and detect criminal conduct. Yet despite these efforts, corporations with the best of motives, with the best of efforts, and with the utmost in due diligence, can still find themselves the subject of a criminal prosecution. This Essay advocates that this new landscape should allow corporations to argue a good faith affirmative defense.

Laws Apply at Sea, Supreme Court Rules was the Washington Post headline for a story reporting the Supreme Court's November 13, 1922 decision of United States v. Bowman. In 1922, America had not yet imagined a globalized world where a local Washington D.C. phone call might be answered in New Delhi and where the notion of Americans making clothes and forging steel was becoming quaint and antiquated. Yet in the Bowman decision, the Court laid the groundwork for a twenty-first century defined by global commerce and crime without borders. Today, the Bowman decision receives relatively little attention. When it is cited, it is often misread by lower courts. But as this new century unfolds, Bowman is likely to be seen as a central decision in the evolution of international criminal jurisdiction. It is time to shine a new light on Bowman-a criminal procedure decision that has long been underrated and misunderstood.