Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Rhetoric Of Motive And Intent, Guyora Binder
The Rhetoric Of Motive And Intent, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
This article offers a critical analysis of the traditional maxim that motive is irrelevant to criminal liability. It retraces the history of this principle to show how its meaning has changed and its validity has declined over time. Originally promoted by reformers, the irrelevance of motive maxim derived meaning from their efforts to codify criminal law. In this context, the irrelevance of motive stood for two related reforms: (1) legislators should condition criminal liability on expectations of harm rather than desires, and (2) courts should require proof of statutory mental elements. With the success of codification, however, the irrelevance of …
Deciding When Hate Is A Crime: The First Amendment, Police Detectives, And The Identification Of Hate Crime, Jeannine Bell
Deciding When Hate Is A Crime: The First Amendment, Police Detectives, And The Identification Of Hate Crime, Jeannine Bell
Articles by Maurer Faculty
This Article adds to the debate a story of how hate crime law is enforced, based on the experiences of the police detectives who are required to enforce hate crime law. Part I of this Article provides a brief description of hate crime laws and argues that the police play an important role in the determination of how hate crime law is enforced and ultimately, whether defendants’ First Amendment rights will be respected. Part II describes critics’ concerns about defendants’ First Amendment rights and the narrow constitutional line that enforcers of hate crime law must walk between enforcing hate crime …
Unwarranted Assumptions In The Prosecution And Defense Of Hate Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Unwarranted Assumptions In The Prosecution And Defense Of Hate Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Articles
Although at far from the level of intensity and prominence that it reached 10 years ago, the controversy over hate crimes legislation continues. In the early 1990s, debate centered on two main points of contention: whether such laws, which either criminalized traditionally racist acts or increased the punishment for other crimes when they were motivated by racial or ethnic bias, violated the First Amendment right to freedom of expression, and whether the laws were unwise and illegitimate because they seemed to provide greater protection against crime to minority groups and to emphasize, rather than obscure or obliterate, the racial divisions …