Law Commons^™

Legal Enforcement Of Morality, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In modern Western political and legal thought, the subject of legal enforcement of morality is narrower than the literal coverage of those terms. That is because much legal enforcement of morality is uncontroversial and rarely discussed. Disagreement arises only when the law enforces aspects of morality that do not involve protecting others from fairly direct harms. More precisely, people raise questions about legal requirements (1) to perform acts that benefit others, (2) to refrain from acts that cause indirect harms to others, (3) to refrain from acts that cause harm to themselves, ( 4) to refrain from acts that offend …

Child Sexual Abuse, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades awareness of child sexual abuse among academics and professionals has grown from several convergent trends: the "discovery" of child abuse in the 1960's, concern by feminists over sexual assault and rape, increasing reports to law enforcement and child protective service workers of sexually abused children, and the general "deprivatization" of the family. More recently, general public awareness of child sexual abuse has followed well-publicized cases of child molestation in day-care centers, nationwide concern over pornography and its subsequent links to teenage prostitution, and runaway youth, delinquency, and family violence among adults.

Punishment, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

Although punishment has been a crucial feature of every legal system, widespread disagreement exists over the moral principles that can justify its imposition. One fundamental question is why (and whether) the social institution of punishment is warranted. A second question concerns the necessary conditions for punishment in particular cases. A third relates to the degree of severity that is appropriate for particular offenses and offenders. Debates about punishment are important in their own right, but they also raise more general problems about the proper standards for evaluating social practices.

The main part of this theoretical overview of the subject of …

The Need Of A Scientific Study Of Crime, Crimninal Law, And Procedure--The American Institute Of Criminal Law And Criminology, Eugene A. Gilmore

Michigan Law Review

The multiplying instances of the delay or seeming miscarriage of justice, together with the indications that crime is not diminishing in this country, as it is in most progressive European countries, are responsible for the widespread feeling that American Criminal Law and Administration are ineffective as a corrective system, and thus fail adequately to protect society; that as President Taft puts it, "The administration of criminal law in this country is a disgrace to our civilization." Defective organization of courts, cumbrous and costly procedure and excessive emphasis on technicalities afford an undue advantage to the law-breaker of means and deepen …