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Overcriminalization

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Criminal Labor Law, Benjamin Levin Jan 2016

Criminal Labor Law, Benjamin Levin

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This Article examines a recent rise in civil suits brought against unions under criminal statutes. By looking at the long history of criminal regulation of labor, the Article argues that these suits represent an attack on the theoretical underpinnings of post-New Deal U.S. labor law and an attempt to revive a nineteenth century conception of unions as extortionate criminal conspiracies. The Article further argues that this criminal turn is reflective of a broader contemporary preference for finding criminal solutions to social and economic problems. In a moment of political gridlock, parties seeking regulation increasingly do so via criminal statute. In …


De-Naturalizing Criminal Law: Of Public Perceptions And Procedural Protections, Benjamin Levin Jan 2013

De-Naturalizing Criminal Law: Of Public Perceptions And Procedural Protections, Benjamin Levin

Publications

Innocence, it turns out, is a complex concept. Yet the Innocence Movement has drawn power from the simplicity of the wrong-person story of innocence, as told most effectively by the DNA cases. The purity of that story continues to have power, but that story alone cannot sustain the Innocence Movement. It is too narrow. It fails to accommodate the vast majority of innocent people in our justice system. It fails to embrace innocence in its full complexity. . . . [I]n the end, for virtually all purposes, innocence must be understood under the objective rules that have long governed the …