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Criminal law

Selected Works

Amy J. Sepinwall

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Faultless Guilt: Toward A Relationship Based View Of Criminal Liability, Amy Sepinwall Dec 2016

Faultless Guilt: Toward A Relationship Based View Of Criminal Liability, Amy Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

There is in the criminal law perhaps no principle more canonical than the fault principle, which holds that one may be punished only where one is blameworthy, and one is blameworthy only where one is at fault. Courts, criminal law scholars, moral philosophers and textbook authors all take the fault principle to be the foundational requirement for a just criminal law. Indeed, perceived threats to the fault principle in the mid-Twentieth Century yielded no less an achievement than the drafting of the Model Penal Code, which had as its guiding purpose an effort to safeguard faultless conduct from criminal condemnation. …

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Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall Dec 2008

Failures To Punish: Command Responsibility In Domestic And International Law, Amy J. Sepinwall

Amy J. Sepinwall

Military spokespeople and upper echelon commanders routinely maintain that wartime atrocities are the acts of a few "bad apples." Yet, while disclaimers of responsibility from higher-ups in the chain of command often beg credulity, the law provides safe harbor for those holding command positions since it is frequently powerless to ensnare anyone but the atrocity's immediate perpetrators. This Article spans international and domestic law, and it addresses one of the doctrinal constraints on holding commanders criminally liable: the doctrine of command responsibility as it applies where commanders fail adequately to investigate or punish atrocities of their troops.

As a theoretical …

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