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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The 100-Plus Year Old Case For A Minimalist Criminal Law (Sketch Of A General Theory Of Substantive Criminal Law), Mike C. Materni
The 100-Plus Year Old Case For A Minimalist Criminal Law (Sketch Of A General Theory Of Substantive Criminal Law), Mike C. Materni
Mike C Materni
Criminal law defines the system of government of which it is the political expression; thus having a normative theory of substantive criminal law is paramount. U.S. criminal law has developed in the absence of such overarching theory, and is now plagued by overcriminalization. This article advances a model of a minimalist criminal law grounded on strong normative principles that are presented and defended not from the perspective of metaphysics or moral philosophy; but rather, in a historical and comparative perspective, as a matter of political choice. Core among those principles is the idea that in a liberal democracy the criminal …
Epilogue: The New Deal At Bay, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Epilogue: The New Deal At Bay, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
The Opening of American Law examines changes in American legal thought that began during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, and extending through the Kennedy/Johnson eras. During this period American judges and legal writers embraced various conceptions of legal "science," although they differed about what that science entailed. Beginning in the Gilded Age, the principal sources were Darwinism in the biological and social sciences, marginalism in economics and psychology, and legal historicism. The impact on judicial, legislative, and later administrative law making is difficult to exaggerate. Among the changes were vastly greater use of behavioral or deterrence based theories of legal …