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Private Actors And Public Corruption: Why Courts Should Adopt A Broad Interpretation Of The Hobbs Act, Megan Demarco
Private Actors And Public Corruption: Why Courts Should Adopt A Broad Interpretation Of The Hobbs Act, Megan Demarco
Michigan Law Review
Federal prosecutors routinely charge public officials with “extortion under color of official right” under a public-corruption statute called the Hobbs Act. To be prosecuted under the Hobbs Act, a public official must promise official action in return for a bribe or kickback. The public official, however, does not need to have actual authority over that official action. As long as the victim reasonably believed that the public official could deliver or influence government action, the public official violated the Hobbs Act. Private citizens also solicit bribes in return for influencing official action. Yet most courts do not think the Hobbs …
The Problem Of Purpose In International Criminal Law, Patrick J. Keenan
The Problem Of Purpose In International Criminal Law, Patrick J. Keenan
Michigan Journal of International Law
Keenan addresses the problem of purposes in this Article, with two principal objectives. The first is to sort through the competing theories to identify the core purposes of international criminal law. The second is to show how those purposes are or can be put into effect in actual cases. These questions are important because the purposes for which the law is deployed significantly influence how it is deployed. Prosecutors bring different kinds of cases and argue different theories based at least in part on what they hope to achieve. For example, in the domestic context, prosecutors might choose to prioritize …