Law Commons^™

Long Live Joint Criminal Enterprise: With A Particular Reference To Tadić’S Interactive Construction Between “The Beast” And Specific Direction, Miguel Ângelo Loureiro Manero De Lemos

San Diego International Law Journal

The idea that Joint Criminal Enterprise, in particular its extended version, contravenes fundamental principles of criminal law has gained track. Thus, not only did the International Criminal Court distance itself from the construct but, today, the widely held view is that the extended version should be discarded, not least because it is not grounded in customary international law. This Article challenges that view. While addressing scholarly criticism towards Joint Criminal Enterprise, and demonstrating why the “beast” is a solid construction, it argues that prosecutors and judges must look past the written provisions of the Statute of the International Criminal Court …

A Path Forward To #Niunamenos Based On An Intersectional Analysis Of Laws Criminalizing Femicide/Feminicide In Latin America, Melissa Padilla

San Diego International Law Journal

Since 2007, eighteen Latin American countries have enacted laws that criminalize femicide/‌feminicide in an effort to address gender-based murders in the region and to uphold their obligations under international human rights law. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and its systemic lingering effects exacerbated the existent dangerous levels of gender-based violence in the region, resulting in an increase in gender-based murders. To address these murders, between 2020 and 2021, a quarter of the eighteen Latin American countries that criminalized femicide/‌feminicide have implemented or are in the process of implementing reforms to their laws criminalizing femicide/‌feminicide. Given this new trend to address the …

Demystifying Mindreading For The Law, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

To lawyers, mindreading conjures up flamboyant images of crystal balls or charlatans. However, it is a deeply serious endeavor for the law. The primary role of fact-finders in civil, criminal, and administrative trials in the United States is to serve as highly-regulated mind readers—to listen to the testimony and decide whether the witnesses are credible and telling the truth. Because it can be so easily biased, we must directly acknowledge how jurors and judges (in addition to voters and employers) automatically and imperfectly read minds. We must remove the “mystique of mindreading,” and see how ordinary assessments of mental states …

Stated Culpability Requirements, Scott England

Faculty Scholarship

This Article comprehensively reviews the law of stated culpability requirements in Model Penal Code (MPC) jurisdictions. Part I provides an overview of section 2.02(4), explaining how the provision works and its role in the MPC’s culpability scheme. Part II then identifies section 2.02(4)’s main weaknesses, drawing on both the provision itself and the Code’s commentary. Next, Part III reviews the law in the twenty-five states with culpability provisions influenced by the MPC, identifying specific problems that section 2.02(4) has created in the case law. Finally, Part IV recommends new stated-culpability rules that improve section 2.02(4) and more rigorously enforce the …

Will The Real Mens Rea Please Stand Up: Assessing The Fifth Circuit’S Kickback Jurisprudence After United States V. Nora, John J. Locurto

St. Mary's Law Journal

Many criminal statutes require willful misconduct, yet willfulness remains an elusive concept. Its meaning and application depend as much on the outcome a court desires as the definition or legal standard a court claims to apply. Ambiguity in the required mens rea is an age-old problem with a venerable pedigree in the circuits and Supreme Court. This article considers anew the struggle to define “willfully” as that term is used in the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS), 42 U.S.C. § 1320a-7b, one of the federal government’s key weapons against health care fraud.

When it decided United States v. Nora and reversed the …

Conspiracy, Complicity, And The Scope Of Contemplated Crime, Kimberly Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

One of the leading casebooks for the first-year Criminal Law course begins the mens rea discussion with Regina v. Cunningham.1 Cunningham, in need of money, decided to rip the gas meter off the residential gas pipe in his soon-to-be basement to steal the shillings inside. That Cunningham was guilty of theft was uncontroversial. The problem was that Cunningham did not turn off the gas, and it seeped into the adjacent home, partially asphyxiating the neighbor, Sarah Wade. Although the case is technically about the interpretation of the word “maliciously” in the Offences against the Person Act, the lesson students are …

Internal And External Challenges To Culpability, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This article was presented at “Guilty Minds: A Virtual Conference on Mens Rea and Criminal Justice Reform” at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. It is forthcoming in Arizona State Law Journal Volume 53, Issue 2.

The thesis of this article is simple: As long as we maintain the current folk psychological conception of ourselves as intentional and potentially rational creatures, as people and not simply as machines, mental states will inevitably remain central to ascriptions of culpability and responsibility more generally. It is also desirable. Nonetheless, we are in a condition of unprecedented internal challenges to …