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Full-Text Articles in Law
Does "Unlawful" Mean "Criminal"?: Reflections On The Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction In American Law, John C. Coffee Jr.
Does "Unlawful" Mean "Criminal"?: Reflections On The Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction In American Law, John C. Coffee Jr.
Faculty Scholarship
What sense does it make to insist upon procedural safeguards in criminal prosecutions if anything whatever can be made a crime in the first place?
—Professor Henry M. Hart, Jr.
My thesis is simple and can be reduced to four assertions. First, the dominant development in substantive federal criminal law over the last decade has been the disappearance of any clearly definable line between civil and criminal law. Second, this blurring of the border between tort and crime predictably will result in injustice, and ultimately will weaken the efficacy of the criminal law as an instrument of social control. Third, …
Self-Defense As A Justification For Punishment, George P. Fletcher
Self-Defense As A Justification For Punishment, George P. Fletcher
Faculty Scholarship
There are few legal ideas as basic as the principle of legitimate self-defense. Every individual, it is said, has the right to defend his or her person, property or living space against wrongful aggression and, if necessary, to kill the aggressor. This principle is so deeply ingrained in our legal thinking that it is difficult to imagine a legal system that did not acknowledge it. The concept of having rights would be virtually toothless unless we could use force to vindicate our rights against aggression.
The notion of having rights is less well-accepted in Jewish law than are the ideas …