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Faculty Scholarship

Boston University School of Law

Criminal law

2012

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

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Punishment Without Conviction: Controlling The Use Of Unconvicted Conduct In Federal Sentencing, Gerald F. Leonard, Christine Dieter Oct 2012

Punishment Without Conviction: Controlling The Use Of Unconvicted Conduct In Federal Sentencing, Gerald F. Leonard, Christine Dieter

Faculty Scholarship

Federal sentencing law is widely applied to punish offenders not only for the offenses of which they have been convicted, but also, in the same proceeding, for offenses of which they have not been convicted. Unlike many scholars, we accept that federal courts can, in the right circumstances, legitimately enhance sentences for facts and conduct found at sentencing, even when those facts and conduct constitute uncharged offenses or even charges on which the defendant actually won an acquittal. But we argue that in identifiable cases, the use of such sentencing facts does cross the line from appropriate contextualization of the …


Ignorance And Mistake Of Criminal Law, Noncriminal Law, And Fact, Kenneth Simons Apr 2012

Ignorance And Mistake Of Criminal Law, Noncriminal Law, And Fact, Kenneth Simons

Faculty Scholarship

After clarifying the distinction between mistakes of fact and mistakes of law, this article explores in detail an important distinction within the category of mistake of law, between mistake about the criminal law itself and mistake about noncriminal law norms that the criminal law makes relevant - for example, about the civil law of property (in a theft prosecution) or of divorce (in a bigamy prosecution). The Model Penal Code seems to endorse the view that mistakes about noncriminal law norms should presumptively be treated as exculpatory in the same way as analogous mistakes about facts. Case law on the …


Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey Jan 2012

Persuasive Visions: Film And Memory, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary takes a new look at law and film studies through the lens of film as memory. Instead of describing film as evidence and foreordaining its role in truth-seeking processes, it thinks instead of film as individual, institutional and cultural memory, placing it squarely within the realm of contestability. Paralleling film genres, the commentary imagines four forms of memory that film could embody: memorabilia (cinéma vérité), memoirs (autobiographical and biographical film), ceremonial memorials (narrative film monuments of a life, person or institution), and mythic memory (dramatic fictional film). Imagining film as memory resituates film’s role in law (procedural, substantive …


Some Notes On Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Criminal Law, Keith N. Hylton Jan 2012

Some Notes On Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Criminal Law, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

The property-liability rules framework, which offers a robust positive theory of criminal law, has come under attack in recent years. One critique, which I label the Indifference Proposition, argues that property rules and liability rules are equivalent in low transaction cost settings. In this paper I examine the conditions under which the Indifference Proposition is valid. In several plausible low transaction-cost settings the proposition is not valid.