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Mistake In The Model Penal Code: A False False Problem, George P. Fletcher
Mistake In The Model Penal Code: A False False Problem, George P. Fletcher
Faculty Scholarship
No solution seems more gratifying to the modern theorist than to claim that an apparently serious problem is not really a problem at all. By branding nonfalsifiable propositions as nonsense, the Vienna circle of logical positivists discovered that the metaphysical concerns of others were really false problems. By ridding philosophy of false problems, Wittgenstein thought that he could let the fly escape from the bottle; he could release the philosophical spirit from its confounding constraints. Brainerd Currie brought this method to the law with his justly famous theory of false conflicts in the conflicts of laws. There was no need …
A Vice Of Its Virtues: The Perils Of Precision In Criminal Codification, As Illustrated By Retreat, General Justification, And Dangerous Utterances, Kent Greenawalt
A Vice Of Its Virtues: The Perils Of Precision In Criminal Codification, As Illustrated By Retreat, General Justification, And Dangerous Utterances, Kent Greenawalt
Faculty Scholarship
My subject, the problem of precision in criminal codes, is hardly novel. Greater precision has been a major aim of systematic codification, which can specify what behavior is criminal in a way that is more rational, coordinated, and exact than would be possible if liability were determined by occasional statutory enactment, by common-law development, or by a combination of occasional statutes and judicial development. Under this last approach, which was typical in the United States prior to the Model Penal Code, statutes loosely set out the list of offenses and their penalties; critical elements of offenses and many defenses of …