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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Law
Taking Mistakes Seriously, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Taking Mistakes Seriously, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Paul J Larkin Jr.
There are two very different mistake doctrines in the law. The common law doctrine that ignorance of the law is no excuse gives no weight to reasonable, good faith mistakes insofar as criminal liability is concerned. By contrast, three related lines of decisions—the reasonable mistake exception to the exclusionary rule, the qualified immunity doctrine, and the harmless error doctrine—express great willingness to overlook reasonable, good faith mistakes that police officers, prosecutors, and judges make. That discrimination between private parties and government officials is unwarranted. There is no good reason to treat private parties systematically worse than public officials in this …
Parole: Corpse Or Phoenix?, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Parole: Corpse Or Phoenix?, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Paul J Larkin Jr.
Parole, once praised for its contribution to the rehabilitative ideal and later vilified for its close association with the same goal, no longer plays a major role in the twenty-first century federal criminal justice system, having been replaced by fixed mandatory sentences and sentencing guidelines. Congress believed a mandatory Sentencing Guidelines system was the ideal means of ending or ameliorating the nationwide sentencing disparities that had plagued the federal criminal justice process for most of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, after initially and repeatedly upholding that mandatory Sentencing Guidelines system, the Supreme Court ultimately kicked that approach to the curb as …
Public Choice Theory And Overcriminalization, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Public Choice Theory And Overcriminalization, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Paul J Larkin Jr.
“Overcriminalization” is a neologism used to describe the overuse and misuse of the criminal law, oftentimes to punish conduct that society traditionally would not deem morally blameworthy. Overcriminalization is less a problem with the substantive criminal law than it is with the lawmaking process. Each new criminal law or sentence enhancement may be eminently sensible on its own, but may turn out to be utterly unreasonable when considered against the background of laws already on the books. In economic terms, the marginal benefit of each new criminal law may be nil, yet the marginal cost that each one imposes could …
Clemency, Parole, Good-Time Credits, And Crowded Prisons: Reconsidering Early Release, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Clemency, Parole, Good-Time Credits, And Crowded Prisons: Reconsidering Early Release, Paul J. Larkin Jr.
Paul J Larkin Jr.
Traditionally, the criminal justice system used executive clemency, parole statutes, and good-time credit laws to grant prisoners an early relief for various reasons, such as to encourage and reward efforts toward rehabilitation and to ease prison overcrowding. The replacement of rehabilitation with incapacitation as the principal justification for criminal punishment over the last 30 years, however, has resulted in an enormous expansion in the prison population. We need to ask whether we have arrived at a point where an overly punitive approach to corrections is hurting as many innocent parties as helping and whether we are generating more criminals than …