This brings to light the importance as well as the complexity of proceedings of that kind. It therefore follows that it is the duty of the defence counsel of an individual organization to deal generally with all the factual and legal problems of these proceedings. The prosecution bases its motion on the hypothesis that according to general principles of law there exists a collective criminal responsibility and that in consequence a criminal condemnation of a group as such is also possible. If it attempts to justify this criterion of law by examples from the penal laws of various civilized countries, it becomes clear that all the examples mentioned do not imply the criminal condemnation of the organizations as such, but only the condemnation of the single individual because of his membership in an organization declared criminal. Nor could it be otherwise.
Criminal responsibility can only apply to an individual.
All criminal law proceeds from the concept of guilt, from the recognition of a criminal act as such and from the sure determination to carry out this act. Only a real person has the faculty to recognize and to exercise a will, and therefore to have a concept of guilt. It is another question whether, as a result of the developments of our age, responsibility of the organization is established for the domain in which, because of its very nature, it is bound to harm the interests of the State. This is the domain of administration, not the domain of criminality rooted in ethics. Laws were created to prevent these irregularities, to punish the organizations as such because of their responsibility in the fields of their pernicious effect by means which can be applied to the organizations as such.