Law Commons^™

The Growing Role Of Fortuity In Texas Criminal Law, Gerald S. Reamey

Faculty Articles

Texas’ recent departure from culpability based crimes now means luck plays a bigger role in the punishment for these crimes. Texas has departed from the traditional notion of punishment based on individual fault, and has arrived at a place where these “new” ways of conceptualizing criminal responsibility adequately and satisfactorily account for the interests served by a more restrictive definition of criminal fault. Traditionally, criminal responsibility attached only when mens rea combined with volitional conduct--or the withholding of some required act--to produce a public harm.

In Texas, there seems to be a trend to punish actors for the harm they …

Criminal Law In A Post-Freudian World, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Freudian psychoanalytic theory has greatly influenced the modern definition of criminal culpability. Indeed, much of the language of key criminal statutes, cases, and psychiatric testimony is framed by psychoanalytic concepts. This impact is particularly evident in the Model Penal Code's mens rea provisions and defenses, which were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of Freudian reign in the United States. For contemporary criminal law, however, this degree of psychoanalytic presence is troublesome. Freudian theory is difficult to apply to group conflicts and legal situations, and the theory emphasizes unconscious (rather than conscious) thoughts. The rising new science of …