Агенттік әрекеттерге жауапкершілік доктринасы

Doctrine that people are responsible for their agents' actions

Respondeat superior (Latin: "let the master answer"; plural: respondeant superiores) is a doctrine that a party is responsible for (and has vicarious liability for) acts of his agents. For example, in the United States, there are circumstances when an employer is liable for acts of employees performed within the course of their employment. This rule is also called the master servant rule, recognized in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. In a broader scope, respondeat superior is based upon the concept of vicarious liability.

The common law concept of respondeat superior has its roots in ancient Rome. At the time, the concept applied to slaves, as that was the meaning of what has been translated as servants, and it applied if the slave could not pay himself for the act. It was later expanded to apply to not only slaves but also animals and family members of the master of a family. In 1698, the doctrine was mentioned in dicta by Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt in the English case of Jones v. Hart, 2 Salk 441, 90 Eng. Rep. (K. B. 1698). In O'Brien v. Dean Witter Reynolds (D. Ariz 1984), the court, emphasizing the requirement of knowing participation, stated that an employee's knowledge could not be imputed to the employer. Similarly, Thomas Hazen wrote in Treatise on the Law of Securities Regulation (2005), "Respondeat superior do[es] not apply to sanctions for illegal trading on inside information." As Robert Anello wrote in Forbes in 2014, "Analysis of the corporate mens rea is, by definition, contrived and one with which federal courts have struggled." In the US, there is a three way circuit split, as the Fifth Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit apply respondeat superior, the Second Circuit and the Seventh Circuit and the Ninth Circuit apply instead a concept of "collective knowledge," and the Sixth Circuit rejects the respondeat superior and collective knowledge approaches and applies a third approach because it views that neither the respondeat superior approach nor the collective knowledge approach is ideal or effectuates the purpose of securities fraud laws.

The US Supreme Court held in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662 (2009), that senior government officials could not be held liable for the unconstitutional conduct of their subordinates under a theory of respondeat superior. This is an example of the US Supreme Court making an exception to break from the general precedent of respondeat superior.

At issue in the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, after the Allied occupation of Nazi Germany after World War II, was a question concerning principles closely related to respondeat superior, which came to be known by the term command responsibility. The Nuremberg Trials established that the defense cannot be used of only following a superior's order if it violates international norms, and especially, superiors who ordered or "should have known" of such violations but failed to intervene are also criminally liable.