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The Moral Ambiguity Of Public Prosecution, Gabriel S. Mendlow
The Moral Ambiguity Of Public Prosecution, Gabriel S. Mendlow
Articles
Classic crimes like theft and assault are in the first instance wrongs against individuals, not against the state or the polity that it represents. Yet our legal system denies crime victims the right to initiate or intervene in the criminal process, relegating them to the roles of witness or bystander—even as the system treats prosecution as an institutional analog of the interpersonal processes of moral blame and accountability, which give pride of place to those most directly wronged. Public prosecution reigns supreme, with the state claiming primary and exclusive moral standing to call offenders to account for their wrongs. Although …
May The State Punish What It May Not Prevent?, Gabriel S. Mendlow
May The State Punish What It May Not Prevent?, Gabriel S. Mendlow
Articles
In Why Is It Wrong To Punish Thought? I defended an overlooked principle of criminalization that I called the Enforceability Constraint. The Enforceability Constraint holds that the state may punish transgressions of a given type only if the state in principle may forcibly disrupt such transgressions on the ground that they are criminal wrongs. As I argued in the essay, the reason why the state is forbidden from punishing thought is that the state is forbidden from forcibly disrupting a person’s mental states on the ground that they are criminally wrongful (as opposed to, say, on the ground that they …
Divine Justice And The Library Of Babel: Or, Was Al Capone Really Punished For Tax Evasion?, Gabriel Mendlow
Divine Justice And The Library Of Babel: Or, Was Al Capone Really Punished For Tax Evasion?, Gabriel Mendlow
Articles
A criminal defendant enjoys an array of legal rights. These include the right not to be punished for an offense unless charged, tried, and proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; the right not to be punished disproportionately; and the right not to be punished for the same offense more than once. I contend that the design of our criminal legal system imperils these rights in ways few observers appreciate. Because criminal codes describe misconduct imprecisely and prohibit more misconduct than any legislature actually aspires to punish, prosecutors decide which violations of the code merit punishment, and judges decide how much …
Corporations, Criminal Law And The Color Of Money, Joseph Vining
Corporations, Criminal Law And The Color Of Money, Joseph Vining
Articles
This part of From Newton's Sleep, published by Princeton University Press in 1995 and in a paperback edition in early 1997, is reprinted by permission of the publisher. From Newton's Sleep is a book on the legal form of thought and its meaning for science and religion. It consists of some two hundred and fifty self-contained pieces arranged in eight sections. In its form, the book is much like and is meant to be much like the material with which lawyers routinely deal. Here, Law Quadrangle Notes excerpts a piece that touches on a subject of lively debate today, among …