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University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

2011

Law and Philosophy

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Legal Studies

Provocation Manslaughter As Partial Justification And Partial Excuse, Mitchell N. Berman, Ian Farrell Jan 2011

Provocation Manslaughter As Partial Justification And Partial Excuse, Mitchell N. Berman, Ian Farrell

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The partial defense of provocation provides that a person who kills in the heat of passion brought on by legally adequate provocation is guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. It traces back to the twelfth century, and exists today, in some form, in almost every U.S. state and other common law jurisdictions. But long history and wide application have not produced agreement on the rationale for the doctrine. To the contrary, the search for a coherent and satisfying rationale remains among the main occupations of criminal law theorists. The dominant scholarly view holds that provocation is best explained and defended …


"Let 'Em Play" A Study In The Jurisprudence Of Sport, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2011

"Let 'Em Play" A Study In The Jurisprudence Of Sport, Mitchell N. Berman

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No abstract provided.


Blackmail, Mitchell N. Berman Jan 2011

Blackmail, Mitchell N. Berman

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Blackmail - the wrongful conditional threat to do what would be permissible - presents one of the great puzzles of the criminal law, and perhaps all of law, for it forces us to explain how it can be impermissible to threaten what it would be permissible to do. This essay, a contribution to forthcoming collection of papers on the philosophy of the criminal law, seeks to resolve the puzzle by building on, and refining, an account of blackmail that I first proposed over a decade ago, what I termed the "evidentiary theory of blackmail." In doing so, it also critically …