DIREITO AMBIENTAL: responsabilidade penal da pessoa jurídica

Abstract

This bachelor’s thesis intends to analyze the applicability of criminal liability to public and private juridical person for environmental crimes. The research is based on the relatively recent possibility of legal entities’ criminal liability which was first introduced in Brazilian legal framework by The 1988 Constitution of The Federative Republic of Brazil and laid down by The Environmental Criminal Law. No. 9605 of 1998. Another aspect is related to the fact that the insertion of the issue into the current Brazilian Constitution and its endorsement by the criminal law were not enough to prevent from consolidating some jurists’ theories which support the removal, denial or even curtailment of the constitutional punishment based on further criminal components not stipulated by any law. Before going to the crux of the matter, a historical research on global and national environmental legislation from the past up to nowadays is going to be carried out for the purpose of laying the thesis foundation. Later on, it is going to be explained the concept of Environmental Law, its basic principles, as well as the main aspects of legal entities and their types. It is also going to be evaluated theories written by scholars in order to justify or not the applicability of legal entities’ liability for environmental crimes and the main subjects of the Law No. 9.605 of 1998, that includes punishment requirements and sanctions on juridical person. That understanding had been adopted by Brazilian courts, including by the Superior Court of Justice, which had one of its judgments on the case overturned lately by the Federal Supreme Court. This academic study is based on hypothetical/deductive techniques. Therefore, several jurists’ theories, legislation, jurisprudence, legal articles and news related to the theme were analyzed for the purpose of demonstrating that there is still much work to be discussed and settled in this area, as the need of legal entities’ criminal liability is latent.In this regard, the case of study involving a disaster caused by the mining company Samarco S/A, that took place in Mariana town, states of Minas Gerais, in November 2015, was collated at the end of this thesis to set out the indispensability of juri