In recent years the term “wage theft” has been widely used to describe the phenomenon of employers not paying their workers the wages they are owed. While the term has great normative weight, it is rarely accompanied by calls for employers literally to be prosecuted under the criminal law....

This article is part of a larger study of the recurrent dilemmas that arise when protective labor law conflicts with the norms of capitalist legality. In this particular case, shareholder liability for unpaid workers' wages was first enacted in mid-nineteenth century New York State as a...