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Full-Text Articles in Law
Can Criminal Law Be Controlled?, Darryl K. Brown
Can Criminal Law Be Controlled?, Darryl K. Brown
Michigan Law Review
It is a bizarre state of affairs that criminal law has no coherent description or explanation. We have standard tropes to define criminal law, but they obscure as much as they clarify and are honored in the breach as much as the rule. Crimes, for instance, are defined by wrongdoing and culpability; to be guilty, one must do a wrongful act in a blameworthy manner, that is, as a responsible agent without excuse or justification. And crimes define public wrongs, which are distinct from private wrongs. Further, we criminalize only harmful conduct, or risk-creating conduct, or immoral conduct, or conduct …
Lessons Of Disloyalty In The World Of Criminal Informants, Michael L. Rich
Lessons Of Disloyalty In The World Of Criminal Informants, Michael L. Rich
Michael L Rich
Without informants, policing would grind to a halt. The majority of drug and organized crime prosecutions hinge on the assistance of confidential informants, and white collar prosecutions and anti-terrorism investigations increasingly depend on them. Yet society by and large hates informants. The epithets used to describe them – “snitch,” “rat,” and “weasel,” among others – suggest the reason: the informant, by assisting the police, is guilty of betrayal. And betrayal is, in the words of George Fletcher, “one of the basic sins of our civilization.” But identifying disloyalty as the reason for society’s disdain raises more questions than it answers. …