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University of Michigan Law School

Criminal Law

Michigan Law Review

Morality

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Law

On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas Feb 2012

On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas

Michigan Law Review

The law has long recognized a presumption against criminal strict liability. This Note situates that presumption in terms of moral intuitions about the role of intention and the unique nature of criminal punishment. Two sources-recent laws from state legislatures and recent advances in moral philosophy-pose distinct challenges to the presumption against strict liability crimes. This Note offers a solution to the philosophical problem that informs how courts could address the legislative problem. First, it argues that the purported problem from philosophy stems from a mistaken relationship drawn between criminal law and morality. Second, it outlines a slightly more nuanced moral …


Was The Frog Prince Sexually Molested?: A Review Of Peter Westen's The Logic Of Consent, Heidi M. Hurd May 2005

Was The Frog Prince Sexually Molested?: A Review Of Peter Westen's The Logic Of Consent, Heidi M. Hurd

Michigan Law Review

Peter Westen's The Logic of Consent is nothing short of a tour de force. In the tradition of the very best and most significant contributions to legal theory, Professor Westen demonstrates that we do not know what we think we know about a capacity that on a daily basis turns trespasses into dinner parties, brutal batteries into football games, rape into lovemaking, and the commercial appropriation of name and likeness into biography. While we all employ claims of consent in everyday moral gossip to absolve some and withhold sympathy from others, and while courts of law across the nation commonly …


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 …


Response: Between Economics And Sociology: The New Path Of Deterrence, Dan M. Kahan Aug 1997

Response: Between Economics And Sociology: The New Path Of Deterrence, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

The explosive collision of economics and sociology has long illuminated the landscape of deterrence theory. It is a debate as hopeless as it is spectacular. Economics is practical but thin. Starting from the simple premise that individuals rationally maximize their utility, economics generates a robust schedule of prescriptions - from the appropriate size of criminal penalties,1 to the optimal form of criminal punishments, to the most efficient mix of private and public investments in deterrence. Yet it is the very economy of economics that ultimately subverts it: its account of human motivations is too simplistic to be believable, and it …


Hating Criminals: How Can Something That Feels So Good Be Wrong?, Joshua Dressler May 1990

Hating Criminals: How Can Something That Feels So Good Be Wrong?, Joshua Dressler

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Forgiveness and Mercy by Jeffrie G. Murphy and Jean Hampton


Moralistic Liberalism And Legal Moralism, Robert P. George May 1990

Moralistic Liberalism And Legal Moralism, Robert P. George

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law by Joel Feinberg


Lawyer's Justice, William A. Edmundson May 1990

Lawyer's Justice, William A. Edmundson

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Lawyers and Justice: An Ethical Study by David Luban, and The Social Responsibilities of Lawyers: Case Studies by Philip B. Heymann and Lance Liebman


Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert May 1981

Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

The controversy over the death penalty has generated arguments of two types. The first argument appeals to moral intuitions; the second concerns deterrence. Although both types of argument speak to the morality of systems of capital punishment, the first debate has been dominated by moral philosophers and the second by empirical social scientists. For convenience I shall at times refer to the approach of the moral philosophers as the moral case for (or against) capital punishment or as the argument from morality.


Bayne: Conscience, Obligation, And The Law, E. F. Roberts Dec 1967

Bayne: Conscience, Obligation, And The Law, E. F. Roberts

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Conscience, Obligation, and the Law by David Cowan Bayne