Law Commons^™

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 …

Tinjauan Yuridis Perbuatan Melawan Hukum Terhadap Cacat Badan Di Indonesia, Yulianto Manurung

"Dharmasisya” Jurnal Program Magister Hukum FHUI

One of the categories of acts against the law stipulated in Article 1365 to 1380 of the Civil Code is an unlawful act that causes bodily defects as stipulated in Article 1371 of the Civil Code What often causes problems in practice is the calculation of the amount of material compensation that must be given to victims who have disabilities as a result of unlawful acts because the Civil Code does not provide clear and complete benchmarks regarding this matter. Arrangements regarding compensation to victims of acts against the law especially those that cause bodily disabilities for the victim have …

Foundations And Types Of Criminal Liability Of A Legal Person In The English Law And The Penal Code Of The United Arab Emirates: A Comparative Study, Butti Sultan Al-Muhairi

UAEU Law Journal

This Article aims to determine the basis and type of corporate criminal liability provided by the UAE Penal Code. To achieve this aim, comparison has been made between the UAE Penal Code and the English Law. The development of corporate criminal liability within the English Law, the basis, type and theories established such liability have been examined. It is seen that the English Criminal Law makes distinction between two types of corporate criminal liability, indirect and direct liability. The English Courts base the indirect liability upon the principle of vicarious liability. This type of liability applies to offences of strict …

Evisceration Of The Right To Appeal: Denial Of Individual Responsibility As Actionable Genocide Denial, Jennifer E. King

Vanderbilt Law Review

Tensions arise during litigation in the international criminal justice system between the practice of the international criminal tribunals, domestic laws, and policy decisions of United Nation (“UN”) Member States. One such tension arises between domestic genocide denial laws, which typically criminalize denial of genocide as a strict liability offense, and the preservation of due process for persons convicted of genocide seeking appeal. In theory, denying individual responsibility during the appeal of a conviction by an international tribunal could constitute punishable genocide denial under some domestic laws. This criminalization of the appeal process would violate the due process rights of international …

Decarceration And Default Mental States, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Essay, presented at “Guilty Minds: A Virtual Conference on Mens Rea and Criminal Justice Reform” at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, examines the politics of federal mens rea reform legislation. I argue that current mens rea policy debates reflect an overly narrow vision of criminal justice reform. Therefore, I suggest an alternative frame through which to view mens rea reform efforts—a frame that resonates with radical structural critiques that have gained ground among activists and academics.

Common arguments for and against mens rea reform reflect a belief that the problem with the criminal system is one of …

Default Culpability Requirements: The Model Penal Code And Beyond, Scott England

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines section 2.02(3) of the Model Penal Code, both as proposed by the ALI and as modified by MPC states, and recommends new default culpability rules to replace it.

The Model Penal Code’s default culpability provision, Section 2.02(3), plays a central but often overlooked role in the Code’s celebrated culpability scheme. Section 2.02(3) “reads in” a requirement of recklessness when an offense is silent about the mental state required for an offense element. The provision has profound implications for criminal law because thousands of state offenses fail to prescribe culpability requirements. Without a default culpability rule like Section …

Mens Rea Reform And Its Discontents, Benjamin Levin

Publications

This Article examines the debates over recent proposals for “mens rea reform.” The substantive criminal law has expanded dramatically, and legislators have criminalized a great deal of common conduct. Often, new criminal laws do not require that defendants know they are acting unlawfully. Mens rea reform proposals seek to address the problems of overcriminalization and unintentional offending by increasing the burden on prosecutors to prove a defendant’s culpable mental state. These proposals have been a staple of conservative-backed bills on criminal justice reform. Many on the left remain skeptical of mens rea reform and view it as a deregulatory vehicle …

Self-Defense, Necessity, And The Duty To Compensate, In Law And Morality, Kenneth W. Simons

San Diego Law Review

What is the proper scope of the right to self-defense in law and morality? How does this right compare to the privilege of necessity? Professor Uwe Steinhoff’s manuscript offers a distinctive and wide-ranging perspective on the controversial questions these privileges raise. This essay engages with a number of his arguments, particularly focusing on legal and moral duties of compensation.

First, this essay examines how Anglo-American tort law would likely address the defender’s liability in a variety of scenarios, including disproportionate, excessive, and unnecessary force; unreasonable and reasonable mistakes; and use of force against innocent aggressors. It next considers whether private …

Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford

John F. Stinneford

For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor. The …

Searching For Culpability, Punishing The Guilty, And Protecting The Innocent: Should Congress Look To The Model Penal Code To Stem The Tide Of Federal Overcriminalization?, David Dailey

Catholic University Law Review

In late 2014, the House Judiciary Committee's Overcriminalization Task Force is expected to release a final report on federal overcriminalization. The Task Force has been studying the issue for over a year, and had held several hearings on a lack of a mens rea requirement in many federal statutes, as well as regulatory offenses that carry criminal sanctions. Several experts have recommended that Congress enact a default mens rea provision similar to the Model Penal Code (MPC). This Comment explores the issue of mens rea at the federal level and the federal courts' understanding of mens rea in federal criminal …

Introduction To The Structure And Limits Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton

All Faculty Scholarship

The book The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law (Ashgate) collects and reprints classic articles on three topics: the conceptual structure of criminal law doctrine, the conduct necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability, and the offender culpability and blameworthiness necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability. The collection includes articles by H.L.A. Hart, Sanford Kadish, George Fletcher, Herbert Packer, Norval Morris, Gordon Hawkins, Andrew von Hirsch, Bernard Harcourt, Richard Wasserstrom, Andrew Simester, John Darley, Kent Greenawalt, and Paul Robinson. This essay serves as an introduction to the collection, explaining how each article fits into the larger debate and giving …

What Was He Thinking? Mens Rea’S Deterrent Effect On Machinegun Possession Under 18 U.S.C. § 924 (C), Stephanie Power

Catholic University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Welfare Offenses, Darryl K. Brown

Darryl K. Brown

This chapter provides an overview, historical account and critical analysis of Anglo-American public welfare offenses, meaning strict liability crimes generally employed for regulatory purposes. As an explanation for the greater prevalence of these strict liability regulatory crimes in England and the U.S. compared to other jurisdictions, the chapter points to, among other factors, the evolving scope of social duties in modernity and traditional Anglo-American limits on central state administrative capacity.

Punishment Without Culpability, John F. Stinneford

UF Law Faculty Publications

For more than half a century, academic commentators have criticized the Supreme Court for failing to articulate a substantive constitutional conception of criminal law. Although the Court enforces various procedural protections that the Constitution provides for criminal defendants, it has left the question of what a crime is purely to the discretion of the legislature. This failure has permitted legislatures to evade the Constitution’s procedural protections by reclassifying crimes as civil causes of action, eliminating key elements (such as mens rea) or reclassifying them as defenses or sentencing factors, and authorizing severe punishments for crimes traditionally considered relatively minor.

The …

Innocent Threats, Concealed Consent, And The Necessary Presence Of Strict Liability In Traditional Fault-Based Tort Law , Marin Roger Scordato

Pepperdine Law Review

This article identifies and carefully analyzes the use in tort law of what is termed unilateral and bilateral legal analysis. Unilateral, or one-party, analysis involves the design of legal doctrine that is focused on the characteristics or status of a single legal person. It is traditionally associated with criminal law, where the doctrinal attention is tightly focused on the criminal defendant. Inquiry may be made regarding the nature and degree of harm suffered by the victim, or whether the victim agreed to the harm producing act, but these considerations are generally relevant only to the degree that they shed light …

On Strict Liability Crimes: Preserving A Moral Framework For Criminal Intent In An Intent-Free Moral World, W. Robert Thomas

Michigan Law Review

The law has long recognized a presumption against criminal strict liability. This Note situates that presumption in terms of moral intuitions about the role of intention and the unique nature of criminal punishment. Two sources-recent laws from state legislatures and recent advances in moral philosophy-pose distinct challenges to the presumption against strict liability crimes. This Note offers a solution to the philosophical problem that informs how courts could address the legislative problem. First, it argues that the purported problem from philosophy stems from a mistaken relationship drawn between criminal law and morality. Second, it outlines a slightly more nuanced moral …

Is Strict Criminal Liability In The Grading Of Offenses Consistent With Retributive Desert?, Kenneth Simons

Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding the demands of retributive desert, strict criminal liability is sometimes defensible when the strict liability pertains, not to whether conduct is to be criminalized at all, but to the seriousness of the actor’s crime. Suppose an actor commits an intentional assault or rape, and accidentally brings about a death. Punishing the actor more seriously because the death resulted is sometimes justifiable, even absent proof of his independent culpability as to the death. But what punishment is proportionate for such an actor? Should he be punished as harshly as an intentional or knowing killer?

Sex, Privacy And Public Health In A Casual Encounters Culture, Mary D. Fan

Articles

The regulation of sex and disease is a cultural and political flashpoint and recurring challenge that law's antiquated arsenal has been hard- pressed to effectively address. Compelling data demonstrate the need for attention—for example, one in four women aged fourteen to nineteen is infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease ("STD"); managing STDs costs an estimated $15.9 billion annually; and syphilis, once near eradication, is on the rise again, as are the rates of HIV diagnosis among people aged fifteen to twenty-four. Public health officials on the front lines have called for paradigm changes to tackle the enormous challenge. …

Making The Best Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Although scorned as irrational by academics, the felony murder doctrine persists as part of our law. It is therefore important that criminal law theory show how the felony murder doctrine can be best justified, and confined within its justifying principles. To that end, this Article seeks to make the best of American felony murder laws by identifying a principle of justice that explains as much existing law as possible, and provides a criterion for reforming the rest. Drawing on the moral intuition that blame for harm is properly affected by the actor’s aims as well as the actor’s expectations, this …

An Analysis Of Thirty-Five Years Of Rape Reform: A Frustrating Search For Fundamental Fairness, Richard Klein

Richard Daniel Klein

This article will analyze the most significant changes in the manner in which individuals who are charged with the crime of rape are prosecuted for that offense. In the last thirty-five years, there has been a steady erosion of the due process rights of those accused of rape.

"Terror Among The Gum Trees" - Is Our Criminal Legal Framework Adequate To Curb The Peril Of Bushfire Arson In Australia, John L. Anderson

John L Anderson

No abstract provided.

The Disutility Of Injustice, Paul H. Robinson, Geoffrey P. Goodwin, Michael Reisig

All Faculty Scholarship

For more than half a century, the retributivists and the crime-control instrumentalists have seen themselves as being in an irresolvable conflict. Social science increasingly suggests, however, that this need not be so. Doing justice may be the most effective means of controlling crime. Perhaps partially in recognition of these developments, the American Law Institute's recent amendment to the Model Penal Code's "purposes" provision – the only amendment to the Model Code in the 47 years since its promulgation – adopts desert as the primary distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment. That shift to desert has prompted concerns by two …

An Information Theory Of Willful Breach, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

Michigan Law Review

Should willful breach be sanctioned more severely than inadvertent breach? Strikingly, there is sharp disagreement on this matter within American legal doctrine, in legal theory, and in comparative law. Within law-and-economics, the standard answer is "no "-breach should be subject to strict liability. Fault should not raise the magnitude of liability in the same way that no fault does not immune the breaching party from liability. In this paper, we develop an alternative law-and-economics account, which justifies supercompensatory damages for willful breach. Willful breach, we argue, reveals information about the "true nature" of the breaching party-that he is more likely …

An Analysis Of Thirty-Five Years Of Rape Reform: A Frustrating Search For Fundamental Fairness, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

This article will analyze the most significant changes in the manner in which individuals who are charged with the crime of rape are prosecuted for that offense. In the last thirty-five years, there has been a steady erosion of the due process rights of those accused of rape.

Rethinking Dui Law In Virginia, Monte Kuligowski

University of Richmond Law Review

As the demand for safer roadways needs little supporting argument, I turn to the constitutional problem of strict criminal liability law, followed with a brief analysis of criminal intent and strict liability law within the criminal system, some examples of how other states have responded to the inherent tensions, and a few specific thoughts for the legislature to consider.

Classic Revisited: Penal Theory In Paradise Lost, Jillisa Brittan, Richard A. Posner

Michigan Law Review

Milton's great poem can be enjoyed as a supernatural adventure story in the epic tradition-indeed almost as a science-fiction fantasy. An incredibly powerful supernatural figure-call him Father-lives on planet Heaven somewhere in outer space, surrounded by lesser supernatural beings, called Angels. Father begets Son asexually, and declares his intent to give him vice regal authority. Infuriated at Son's being promoted over him, the foremost Angel, L leads a third of the Angels in violent rebellion against Father and Son. At first it seems the rebels will best the loyal Angels. But Father sends in Son to defeat the rebels all …

"No Provincial Or Transient Notion": The Need For A Mistake Of Age Defense In Child Rape Prosecutions, Jarrod F. Reich

Faculty Scholarship

Suppose a state legislature enacted a law making any theft a crime punishable by twenty years' imprisonment. Within this law was a provision precluding an accused from introducing evidence that he unwittingly took property to which he was not entitled. Suppose further that after this law was enacted, an elderly woman hung her black coat in a restaurant's lobby and, upon leaving, mistakenly retrieved another's black coat.1 Under the hypothetical statute, her mistake could neither hinder the prosecution's case against her nor be asserted by her as a defense. By inadvertently taking another's coat from a crowded restaurant, the woman …

On Statutory Rape, Strict Liability, And The Public Welfare Offense Model, Catherine L. Carpenter

American University Law Review

Statutory Rape. At the center of a long-standing debate on whether its commission should require proof of a criminal mens rea, the prosecution of statutory rape offers a revealing look at the struggle to demarcate the parameters of the public welfare offense doctrine. Specifically, with respect to statutory rape, disagreement is deep and entrenched on whether statutory rape should be categorized as a public welfare offense, which would render irrelevant defendant's lack of knowledge of the victim's age. And despite wholesale revamping of state statutory rape laws on issues of age, gender, and potential grading and punishment, the debate on …

Towards A Legal History Of American Criminal Theory: Culture And Doctrine From Blackstone To The Model Penal Code, Gerald F. Leonard

Faculty Scholarship

Many writers in recent decades have objected to the utilitarian aspects of substantive criminal law that cannot be squared with modern, retributivist versions of criminal justice. One particular target of the retributivists has been the use of strict liability, especially as it is applied in statutory rape cases. This article is an effort, not to take sides between utilitarians and retributivists, but to historicize the ideas and assumptions on all sides of the debates in criminal law, including the debate about strict liability in statutory rape.

Discovering very little historical work on the subject, I offer the first general intellectual …

The Fault Of Not Knowing, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the outpouring of interest in tort and criminal theory over the last thirty years, not much progress has been made toward understanding the basic concepts for analyzing liability. Common law theorists of torts and criminal law tend to accept the conventional distinction between objective and subjective standards and the view that objective negligence is not really fault in the way that subjective negligence is. The author's view is that this distinction between objective and subjective standards is misunderstood and that, in fact, so-called objective negligence is a test of fault or culpability in the same way that subjective standards …