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"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich
"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich
Faculty Scholarship
Suppose a state legislature enacted a law making any theft a crime punishable by twenty years' imprisonment. Within this law was a provision precluding an accused from introducing evidence that he unwittingly took property to which he was not entitled. Suppose further that after this law was enacted, an elderly woman hung her black coat in a restaurant's lobby and, upon leaving, mistakenly retrieved another's black coat.1 Under the hypothetical statute, her mistake could neither hinder the prosecution's case against her nor be asserted by her as a defense. By inadvertently taking another's coat from a crowded restaurant, the woman …
Review Of H.L.A. Hart, The Morality Of The Criminal Law, Oxford University Press (1965), Stanley Z. Fisher
Review Of H.L.A. Hart, The Morality Of The Criminal Law, Oxford University Press (1965), Stanley Z. Fisher
Faculty Scholarship
This slim volume contains the text of two lectures given by Professor Hart at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1964. The first lecture, "Changing Conceptions of Responsibility," expresses concern at the turn in which the "liberal" criminal law reform movement in England has taken in connection with the law of criminal responsibility. Professor Hart takes issue with the stand of a leading reformer, Lady Wootton, who advocates abolition of the mens rea prerequisite to penal liability. In her view, the mental state of a harm-doer is relevant not to determining his penal liability (conviction), but only to the decision …