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Divine Justice And The Library Of Babel: Or, Was Al Capone Really Punished For Tax Evasion?, Gabriel Mendlow Oct 2018

Divine Justice And The Library Of Babel: Or, Was Al Capone Really Punished For Tax Evasion?, Gabriel Mendlow

Articles

A criminal defendant enjoys an array of legal rights. These include the right not to be punished for an offense unless charged, tried, and proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; the right not to be punished disproportionately; and the right not to be punished for the same offense more than once. I contend that the design of our criminal legal system imperils these rights in ways few observers appreciate. Because criminal codes describe misconduct imprecisely and prohibit more misconduct than any legislature actually aspires to punish, prosecutors decide which violations of the code merit punishment, and judges decide how much …


Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield Jan 2015

Reflections On Freedom And Criminal Responsibility In Late Twentieth Century American Legal Thought, Thomas A. Green, Merrill Catharine Hodnefield

Articles

It is now a commonplace among historians that American criminal jurisprudence underwent a dramatic change something like two-thirds to three-quarters into the last century. Roughly, this development is understood as a shift (or drift) from a more-or-less pure consequentialism to a "mixed theory" wherein retributivism played a major-at times, dominant-role. As the new paradigm remains intact, now approaching a half-century, the development qualifies as a significant historical fact. The fact applies not only to the history of justification for punishment but also to conceptions of the underlying principle of (basis for) responsibility. The two are rightly distinguished: for many scholars …


A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore Jan 2007

A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

Pay-to-stay jails expose the moral tension between the dominant theories of punishment: retributivism and deterrence. A turn to a third major moral theory—virtue ethics—resolves this tension. According to virtue ethics, the moral worth of an action follows from both the character of the action and the disposition of the actor. Virtuous acts promote human flourishing— the central goal of life—when they are the right actions performed for the right reasons. The virtue ethics theory of punishment suggests that pay-to-stay jails conflict with the promotion of human flourishing. A virtuous state’s criminal justice system would not include fee-based incarceration because it …


Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan Oct 1997

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …


Rediscovering Hegel's Theory Of Crime And Punishment, Markus Dirk Dubber May 1994

Rediscovering Hegel's Theory Of Crime And Punishment, Markus Dirk Dubber

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Hegel's Political Philosophy: Interpreting the Practice of Legal Punishment by Mark Tunick


Introducing Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse May 1989

Introducing Criminal Law, Stephen J. Morse

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Bad Acts and Guilty Minds: Conundrums of the Criminal Law by Leo Katz, and Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A Philosophical Introduction by C.L. Ten


Troubling Questions: A Review Of The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Sheldon L. Messinger Mar 1983

Troubling Questions: A Review Of The Decline Of The Rehabilitative Ideal, Sheldon L. Messinger

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal: Penal Policy and Social Purpose by Francis A. Allen


The Future Of Imprisonment: Toward A Punitive Philosophy, Norval Morris May 1974

The Future Of Imprisonment: Toward A Punitive Philosophy, Norval Morris

Michigan Law Review

Proper use of imprisonment as a penal sanction is of primary philosophical and practical importance to the future of society. With the increasing vulnerability of our social organization and the growing complexity and interdependence of governmental structures, reassessment of appropriate limits on the power that society should exercise over its members becomes increasingly important. Perhaps if the "prison problem" is solved, many of the uneasy tensions between freedom and power in postindustrial society will diminish. The effort made here will, I hope, contribute to the solution of the "prison problem" by offering a new model of imprisonment that recognizes fundamental …


Theory And Application Of Roscoe Pound's Sociological Jurisprudence: Crime Prevention Or Control?, Louis H. Masotti, Michael A. Weinstein Apr 1969

Theory And Application Of Roscoe Pound's Sociological Jurisprudence: Crime Prevention Or Control?, Louis H. Masotti, Michael A. Weinstein

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The current interest in reforming the administration of justice has been triggered by a number of factors including the 1967 report of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice and the treatment afforded arrestees during the civil disorders of the past few years. The nation is alarmed at the reported annual increases in crime, and this alarm was manifested in the 1968 presidential election when "law and order" became a major issue. Superficially the answer may seem clear: more effective enforcement of the law and, when necessary, more stringent laws. The critical issue, however, is a …