Law Commons^™

Deterrence, David Crump

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Abandoned Criminal Attempts: An Economic Analysis, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

An attempt is 'abandoned' if the criminal, despite having a chance to continue with his criminal plan, forgoes the opportunity to do so. A regime that makes abandonment a defense to criminal attempts provides an incentive to the offender to withdraw from his criminal conduct prior to completing the previously intended offense. However, the same regime may induce offenders to initiate criminal plans more often by reducing the expected costs associated with such plans. The former effect is called the marginal deterrence effect and the latter is called the ex-ante deterrence effect of the abandonment defense. This Article formalizes a …

Crime And Punishment, A Global Concern: Who Does It Best And Does Isolation Really Work?, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

In Personam (Criminal) Forfeiture And Federal Drug Felonies: An Expansion Of A Harsh English Tradition Into A Modern Dilemma, William J. Hughes, Edward H. O'Connell Jr.

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Law And Economics Of Fluctuating Criminal Tendencies And Incapacitation, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analyses of criminal law are frequently and heavily criticized for being unable to explain many criminal law rules and doctrines that people find intuitively just. Existing economic models cannot properly explain, for instance, why criminal law distinguishes between (i) repeat offenders and first-time offenders, (ii) murder and voluntary manslaughter, and (iii) remorseful and non-remorseful offenders.

In this Article, I propose a new and richer economic theory of crime that captures the rationales behind these practices, and potentially behind many other important criminal law principles and doctrines. Unlike an overwhelming majority of previous economic analyses, my theory accounts not only …

Ending Death By Dangerousness, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

The use of the death penalty (both in number of new death sentences and actual executions) has been steadily decreasing in the past decade. This decrease has largely been attributed to two phenomena: (1) the continued discovery of individuals on death row who are actually innocent of the crimes they committed and (2) the increasing use of life without parole as a sentencing alternative to the death penalty. Abolitionists have successfully seized upon the first of these in raising continuing doubts about the use of the death penalty. This article proposes a deeper exploration of the second, the availability of …

Administrative Detention Of Terrorists: Why Detain, And Detain Whom?, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This article aims to reframe the administrative detention debate, not to resolve it. In doing so, however, it aspires to advance the discussion by highlighting the critical substantive choices embedded in calls for legal procedural reform and by pointing the way toward appropriately tailored legislative options. It argues that the current debate’s focus on procedural and institutional questions of how to detain suspected terrorists has been allowed to overshadow the questions of why administratively detain, and whom to detain. Not only are the answers to these questions at least as important as the procedural rules in safeguarding and balancing liberty …

Post-Modern Meditations On Punishment: On The Limits Of Reason And The Virtues Of Randomization, Bernard E. Harcourt, Alon Harel, Ken Levy, Michael M. O'Hear, Alice Ristroph

Faculty Scholarship

In this Criminal Law Conversation (Robinson, Ferzan & Garvey, eds., Oxford 2009), the authors debate whether there is a role for randomization in the penal sphere - in the criminal law, in policing, and in punishment theory. In his Tanner lectures back in 1987, Jon Elster had argued that there was no role for chance in the criminal law: “I do not think there are any arguments for incorporating lotteries in present-day criminal law,” Elster declared. Bernard Harcourt takes a very different position and embraces chance in the penal sphere, arguing that randomization is often the only way to avoid …