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Rule And Exception In Criminal Law (Or, Are Criminal Defenses Necessary?), Janine Young Kim
Rule And Exception In Criminal Law (Or, Are Criminal Defenses Necessary?), Janine Young Kim
Janine Kim
The advent of new defensive claims, such as the battered woman's defense and the cultural defense, has led to debates that invoke a variety of important legal and political principles on both sides of the issues. But asking whether we ought to adopt new defenses in the criminal law raises a more fundamental question: why do we ever adopt defenses in the criminal law? Two simple reasons come to mind - (1) defenses may be necessary to our system of criminal law, or (2) defenses may be good for our system of criminal law. In this Article, I consider what …