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Full-Text Articles in Law
Felony Murder And Mens Rea Default Rules: A Study In Statutory Interpretation, Guyora Binder
Felony Murder And Mens Rea Default Rules: A Study In Statutory Interpretation, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
The Model Penal Code's influential approach to culpability included default rules assigning a culpable mental state to every conduct, circumstance and result element of each offense. Such rules have been enacted in half of the American states. The Code's drafters also rejected what they understood to be the felony murder rule's imposition of "a form of strict liability for... homicide." Yet almost every state has retained some form of the felony murder rule and so repudiated the Model Penal Code's proposed reform. Because the Model Penal Code's disapproval of felony murder flows from its general disapproval of strict liability, the …
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Journal Articles
This paper is a defense of utilitarian penology, against the familiar retributivist charge that it promotes framing the innocent, and other charges similarly depending on the notion that utilitarianism encourages officials to deceive the public. Our defense proceeds from the striking fact that utilitarianism's critics do not cite textual evidence that the originators of utilitarian penology in fact endorsed punishing the innocent or deceiving the public. Instead, critics claim that these unsavory policies follow logically from the premises of utilitarianism. Our argument, in brief, is that the charge of framing the innocent rests on a misunderstanding of utilitarian penology. We …