ABSTRACT
The court reasoned that the common purpose doctrine in South African criminal law is not unconstitutional since it is 'rationally connected to the legitimate objective of limiting and controlling joint criminal enterprise'. De Wet at any rate rejected the English common law notion of corporate criminal liability based on vicarious liability as well as the statutory forms of corporate criminal liability later adopted in South Africa as unsound and prone to unintended and even absurd consequences. While authors like De Wet were opposed to the very notion of corporate criminal liability, more recently commentators have started to question the constitutionality and scope of the liability created via section. With reference to the basic structure of corporate criminal liability in terms of section of the Criminal Procedure Act, one can say that it is indeed akin to vicarious liability, although the comparison is not perfect.
