Catholic Dioceses, Legal Systems, and Corporate Accountability

Meredith Edelman (Monash Business School, Australia)

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English

Hart Publishing
13 November 2025

This book explores how different legal systems handle a particularly difficult type of corporate wrongdoing: Catholic dioceses' responsibility for child sexual abuse.

Usually, when people think about corporate wrongdoing, they think about tax fraud, insider trading, and similar 'white-collar' crime. As corporations, these dioceses’ responsibility is distinct from that of individual perpetrators. This book is

concerned with that corporate responsibility. As corporations, these dioceses’ responsibility is distinct from that of individual perpetrators, and this corporate responsibility is the focus of this book.

Through an analysis of cases involving dioceses that have significant documented histories of priests abusing children, the book illustrates how criminal law, canon law, tort law, bankruptcy law and an Australian Royal Commission have responded (or why they have not). The cases involve the Diocese of Ballarat, in Victoria, Australia, and the Diocese of Gallup, in northern Arizona and New Mexico, in the USA. Each diocese faced similar claims in a diverse field of legal systems, so very different legal systems were handling, in essence, the same cases in dissimilar contexts.

A novel interdisciplinary approach, the book traces the theories, purposes, doctrines, procedures, and logistics of engaging with these different legal systems—evaluating what they can and cannot do. Revitalising theories of responsive law, the book demonstrates that it is possible for legal systems to better hold not just Catholic dioceses, but corporations more generally, to account for wrongdoing, but we may need to re-think how those systems are structured.

By: Meredith Edelman (Monash Business School Australia)
Imprint: Hart Publishing
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781509982073
ISBN 10: 1509982078
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 13 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Preface 1. Catholic Organisations and Child Sexual Abuse: A Corporate Wrong 2. Responsiveness and Aspects of Legal Systems: Why Not Criminal Law? 3. The Dioceses of Ballarat and Gallup 4. Canon Law 5. Tort Law in Victoria, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Navajo Nation 6. The Royal Commission: A Quasi-Responsive System 7. Chapter 11: A Quasi-Responsive System 8. Lessons on Responsive Law and Corporate Accountability

Meredith Edelman is Senior Lecturer in Law at Monash Business School, Australia.