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The Federal Criminal "Code" Is A Disgrace: Obstruction Statutes As Case Study, Julie R. O'Sullivan
The Federal Criminal "Code" Is A Disgrace: Obstruction Statutes As Case Study, Julie R. O'Sullivan
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Any discussion of federal penal law must begin with an important caveat: There actually is no federal criminal "code" worthy of the name. A criminal code is defined as "'a systematic collection, compendium, or revision' of laws." What the federal government has is a haphazard grab-bag of statutes accumulated over 200 years, rather than a comprehensive, thoughtful, and internally consistent system of criminal law. In fact, the federal government has never had a true criminal code. The closest Congress has come to enacting a code was its creation of Title 18 of the United States Code in 1948. That "exercise, …