Criminal Law Commons^™

Mature Adjudication: Interpretive Choice In Recent Death Penalty Cases, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Capital punishment presents a "hard" case for adjudication. It provokes sharp conflict between competing constitutional interpretations and invariably raises questions of judicial bias. This is particularly true in the new Republic of South Africa, where the framers of the interim constitution deliberately were silent regarding the legality of the death penalty. The tension is of equivalent force in the United States, where recent expressions of core constitutional rights have raised potentially irreconcilable conflicts in the application of capital punishment.

Two recent death penalty decisions – the South African Constitutional Court opinions in State v. Makwanyane and the United States Supreme …

Domination In Wrongdoing, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

Blackstone had a point in identifying crimes as public wrongs and torts as private wrongs. Both crimes and torts claim victims, however, the victims' responses vary according to context. In criminal cases, the victim responds by hoping that the government will apprehend and successfully prosecute the offender. In tort disputes, the victim responds by demanding compensation.

It is unclear, however, what constitutes wrongdoing. Defining wrongdoing as the violation of rights is unhelpful, for that definition only raises other questions: Who has rights and what is their content? Therefore, to understand the nature of wrongdoing, we should seek a substantive theory …

Cooperating Clients, Daniel Richman

Faculty Scholarship

Indicted on serious narcotics charges, Jose Lopez retained Barry Tarlow to “vigorously defend and try the case.” Tarlow was up to the task but warned Lopez that it was “his general policy not to represent clients in negotiations with the government concerning cooperation,” and that he did not plan to make any exception for Lopez. As Tarlow later explained, he found such negotiations “personally[,] morally and ethically offensive.” This arrangement suited Lopez just fine, until he wavered in his resolution. Encouraged by a co-defendant, worried about his children, and hoping to obtain an early release from prison …

Imagery And Adjudication In The Criminal Law: The Relationship Between Images Of Criminal Defendants And Ideologies Of Criminal Law In Southern Antebellum And Modern Appellate Decisions, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Criminal law opinions often project a distinct image of the accused. Sometimes, she is cast in a sympathetic light and may appear vulnerable or impressionable: a single mother, whose husband has died, struggling to raise her two, loving children; an impoverished, nineteen-year-old African-American with a fifth-grade education, "mentally dull and 'slow to learn;'" or a defenseless "obedient servant," protecting himself from an "adversary armed with a deadly weapon." On other occasions, the defendant may appear threatening, savage or even diabolical: a cold-blooded recidivist that escapes from a prison workcrew, brutally stabs, rapes and murders a woman, and returns for a …

The Sentencing Guidelines As A Not-So-Model Penal Code, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

We are accustomed to thinking about the criminal law, and the procedures for enforcing it, as divided into two separate stages. The first stage – the subject of penal codes and jury trials – concerns the definition of culpable conduct and the adjudication of guilt. The second stage – sentencing – concerns the consequences of conviction for the offender. Only rarely do we acknowledge that the conventional separation of these stages into compartments is highly misleading.

The articles in this Issue of FSR address, in one way or another, the extent to which the concerns of the substantive criminal law …

Violence Against Lesbians And Gay Men, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Bea Hanson

Faculty Scholarship

Faggot! Dyke! Pervert! Homo!" Just words? Or rhetoric that illuminates and fuels hatred of lesbians and gay men? How often are these words supplemented by the use of a bat, golf clubs, a hammer, a knife, a gun? Studies indicate that lesbians and gay men experience criminal victimization at rates significantly higher than other individuals and are the most frequent victims of bias crime.

Since lesbians and gay men live all across the country – in large cities, small towns, and rural areas – we can be targets of bias crime no matter where we live. From the attacks against …

What Is Punishment Imposed For?, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The institution of punishment invites a number of philosophical queries. Sometimes the question is: How do we know that inflicting discomfort and disadvantage is indeed punishment? This is a critical question, for example, in cases of deportation or disbarment proceedings. Classifying the sanction as punishment triggers application of the Sixth Amendment and its procedural guarantees. In other situations the question might be: Why do we punish? What is the purpose of making people suffer? In this context, we encounter the familiar debates about the conflicting appeal of retribution, general deterrence, special deterrence, and rehabilitation.

In this article I wish to …

Brutality In Blue: Community, Authority, And The Elusive Promise Of Police Reform, Debra A. Livingston

Faculty Scholarship

In January 1994, President Clinton invited Kevin Jett, a thirtyone-year-old New York City police officer who walks a beat in the northwest Bronx, to attend the State of the Union Address. Jett stood for Congress's applause as the President called for the addition of 100,000 new community police officers to walk beats across the nation. The crime problem faced by Officer Jett and community police officers like him, the President said, has its roots "in the loss of values, the disappearance of work, and the breakdown of our families and communities." According to the Clinton administration, however, the police – …

On The Moral Irrelevance Of Bodily Movements, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the mess of confusions called Anglo-American criminal law, writers commonly refer to the "problem of punishing omissions." There is something untoward, they say, about imposing criminal liability on the bystander who could intervene to save a drowning child and fails to do so. Punishing acts in violation of the law is all right, but there is some special difficulty, never completely understood and clarified, about imposing liability for omissions.

The confusion about omissions has suffered unnecessary compounding by the organization of one of the leading casebooks on criminal law. Apparently not quite sure where to locate their cases on …

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

Of Laws And Men: An Essay On Justice Marshall's View Of Criminal Procedure, Daniel C. Richman, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

As a general rule, criminal defendants whose cases made it to the Supreme Court between 1967 and 1991 must have thought that, as long as Justice Thurgood Marshall occupied one of the nine seats, they had one vote for sure. And Justice Marshall rarely disappointed them – certainly not in cases of any broad constitutional significance. From his votes and opinions, particularly his dissents, many were quick to conclude that the Justice was another of those "bleeding heart liberals," hostile to the mission of law enforcement officers and ready to overlook the gravity of the crimes of which the defendants …

Reel Time/Real Justice, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Faculty Scholarship

Like the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings a few months before, the Rodney King beating, the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers who "restrained" him and the subsequent civil unrest in Los Angeles flashed Race across the national consciousness and the gaze of American culture momentarily froze there. Pieces of everyday racial dynamics briefly seemed clear, then faded from view, replaced by presidential politics and natural disasters.

This Essay examines in more depth what was exposed during the momentary national focus on Rodney King. Two main events – the acquittal of the police officers who beat King and the civil …

The Political Economy Of Female Violent Street Crime, Deborah Baskin, Ira Sommers, Jeffrey A. Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years after the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime considered problems of violence in the United States, and on the heels of a National Academy Sciences report on violence, the nation seems poised to begin a new "war on violence." Past "wars" on crime problems, including the recently stalemated "war on drugs" have focused primarily on males. This one promises to be no different. Violence continues to be viewed as the province of young males in urban areas. According to the Uniform Crime Reports, over 75% of homicide victims in 1990 were males, and over 85% of …

Further Reflections On Libertarian Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Since David Luban's is the work on legal ethics that I admire and agree with most, there is an element of perversity in my vehement critique of his arguments on criminal defense. I am therefore especially thankful for his gracious and thoughtful response. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that Luban is mistaken in excepting criminal defense from much of the responsibility to substantive justice that we both think appropriate in every other sphere of lawyering.

Lawyers At The Prison Gates: Organizational Structure And Corrections Advocacy, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

The rise of the public interest law movement ushered in an era of intense debate over the best way to provide legal representation to those unable to afford private counsel. This debate has involved two related dimensions of public interest representation. First, advocates and observers of public interest practice disagree over the proper role of lawyers acting on behalf of poor and underrepresented clients. They offer competing visions of representation spanning a continuum, from providing equal access to the courts for as many poor people as possible, to attacking the causes and effects of poverty and powerlessness.

The second dimension …

Blackmail: The Paradigmatic Crime, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing debate about the rationale for punishing blackmail assumes that there is something odd about the crime. Why, the question goes, should demanding money to conceal embarrassing information be criminalized when there is nothing wrong with the separate acts of keeping silent or requesting payment for services rendered? Why should an innocent end (silence) coupled with a generally respectable means (monetary payment) constitute a crime? This supposed paradox, however, is not peculiar to blackmail. Many good acts are corrupted by doing them for a price. There is nothing wrong with government officials showing kindness or doing favors for their …

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

Paradigms Lost: The Blurring Of The Criminal And Civil Law Models – And What Can Be Done About It, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Ken Mann's professed goal is to "shrink" the criminal law. To realize this worthy end, he advocates punitive civil sanctions that would largely parallel criminal sanctions, thereby reducing the need to use criminal law in order to achieve punitive purposes. I agree (heartily) with the end he seeks and even more with his general precept that "the criminal law should be reserved for the most damaging wrongs and the most culpable defendants." But I believe that the means he proposes would be counterproductive – and would probably expand, rather than contract, the operative scope of the criminal law as an …

A Reply: Imperfect Bargains, Imperfect Trials, And Innocent Defendants, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

To understand what is and is not wrong with plea bargaining, one must understand the relationship of bargains to trials. Unsurprisingly, we disagree with much of what Judge Frank Easterbrook and Professor Stephen Schulhofer say about that relationship. Most of those disagreements need not be rehearsed here; readers attentive enough to wade through their essays and ours will pick up the key points readily enough. But there is one point where the dispute is at once sharp and hidden. It has to do with the fact that both trials and bargains are flawed.

That fact might seem obvious, but the …

The Ethics Of Criminal Defense, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

A large literature has emerged in recent years challenging the standard conception of adversary advocacy that justifies the lawyer in doing anything arguably legal to advance the client's ends. This literature has proposed variations on an ethic that would increase the lawyer's responsibilities to third parties, the public, and substantive ideals of legal merit and justice.

With striking consistency, this literature exempts criminal defense from its critique and concedes that the standard adversary ethic may be viable there. This paper criticizes that concession. I argue that the reasons most commonly given to distinguish the criminal from the civil do not …

Conference On The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Panel 3: The Allocation Of Discretion Under The Guidelines, Daniel J. Freed, Gerard E. Lynch, Steven M. Salky, Maria Rodriguez Mcbride, Vincent L. Broderick

Faculty Scholarship

The guidelines have shifted the locus of discretion from the judge to the prosecutor. This transfer has drastically changed sentencing because the prosecutor's role is very different from the judge's role.

Before the guidelines, the prosecutor's role in sentencing was minimal. The prosecutor could put a cap on the sentence by accepting a plea to a charge with a low maximum, but there was virtually no instance in which the charge would put a floor under the judge's sentence. The judge, on the other hand, could sentence however he liked. Not only was the judge's decision correct because it was …

The Reasonable Woman And The Ordinary Man, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

Nineteen ninety-one was a seismic year for sexual harassment. The first localized shift occurred in January, when the Ninth Circuit established that the standard by which sexual harassment in the workplace would be judged was no longer the reasonable man or even the reasonable person but rather the reasonable woman. In October a larger audience felt a much stronger jolt when Anita Hill spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Hill testified that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her while she worked for him at the Department of Education and at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her testimony …

Plea-Bargaining As A Social Contract, Robert E. Scott, William J. Stuntz

Faculty Scholarship

Most criminal prosecutions are settled without a trial. The parties to these settlements trade various risks and entitlements: the defendant relinquishes the right to go to trial (along with any chance of acquittal), while the prosecutor gives up the entitlement to seek the highest sentence or pursue the most serious charges possible. The resulting bargains differ predictably from what would have happened had the same cases been taken to trial. Defendants who bargain for a plea serve lower sentences than those who do not. On the other hand, everyone who pleads guilty is, by definition, convicted, while a substantial minority …

Does "Unlawful" Mean "Criminal"?: Reflections On The Disappearing Tort/Crime Distinction In American Law, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

What sense does it make to insist upon procedural safeguards in criminal prosecutions if anything whatever can be made a crime in the first place?
—Professor Henry M. Hart, Jr.

My thesis is simple and can be reduced to four assertions. First, the dominant development in substantive federal criminal law over the last decade has been the disappearance of any clearly definable line between civil and criminal law. Second, this blurring of the border between tort and crime predictably will result in injustice, and ultimately will weaken the efficacy of the criminal law as an instrument of social control. Third, …

Self-Defense As A Justification For Punishment, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

There are few legal ideas as basic as the principle of legitimate self-defense. Every individual, it is said, has the right to defend his or her person, property or living space against wrongful aggression and, if necessary, to kill the aggressor. This principle is so deeply ingrained in our legal thinking that it is difficult to imagine a legal system that did not acknowledge it. The concept of having rights would be virtually toothless unless we could use force to vindicate our rights against aggression.

The notion of having rights is less well-accepted in Jewish law than are the ideas …

Violence As Regulation And Social Control In The Distribution Of Crack, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Ko-Lin Chin

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines violence and aggression among crack and other illicit drug sellers in New York City. Few studies have addressed the origins of drug selling, specifically whether such drug violence reflects generalized violence or violent behaviors contingent on drug selling. Aggression in crack selling appears to be commonplace and severe (Goldstein et al., unpublished manuscript; Goldstein 1989; Johnson, et al. 1990; New York Times 1989b) and is the focus of this study. Aggression evident in nondrug criminality is compared for crack sellers and other seller types. If violence in drug selling is a distinct behavior that reflects the contingencies …

A Conceptual, Practical, And Political Guide To Rico Reform, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

RICO is nearing its twentieth birthday, but it may not be a happy one. In fact, 'tis the season for critics of RICO to be, if not jolly, at least highly active. A House subcommittee and the Senate Judiciary Committee have held hearings on RICO reform, the popular and business press has published numerous debates and criticisms involving fairly arcane points of civil and criminal law, scholars and lawyers have filled law reviews and legal newspapers with articles often critical of the statute, and the pressure has been building for statutory changes.

As the pressure for change has intensified, and …

How Useful Is Civil Rico In The Enforcement Of Criminal Law?, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

The title of this paper asks what appears to be a simple and important question: Just how much does the availability of extensive private civil remedies for violation of the RICO statute add to the effort to ensure compliance with the norms of criminal law? These remarks address only civil RICO actions by private plaintiffs. The once-rare, but increasingly frequent, civil RICO actions brought by the United States present very different issues. This question is, of course, only a part of any assessment of the value of civil RICO. One may conclude that civil RICO is of little or no …

Determinants Of Judicial Waiver Decisions For Violent Juvenile Offenders, Jeffrey Fagan, Elizabeth Piper Deschens

Faculty Scholarship

The selection of jurisdiction for adjudicating juvenile crime today is one of the most controversial debates in crime control policy, reflecting differences in assumptions about the causes of crime and philosophies of jurisprudence and punishment. For adolescent offenders, especially violent youth whose behaviors may pose particular social danger, critics view the traditional goals of the juvenile court and the "best interests of the child" standard as being at odds with public concerns for retribution and incapacitation of criminals. The choice between jurisdictions is a choice between the nominally rehabilitative dispositions of the juvenile court and the explicitly punitive dispositions of …

"Carrot And Stick" Sentencing: Structuring Incentives For Organizational Defendants, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

The new "Draft Guidelines for Organizational Defendants" released by the U.S. Sentencing Commission on October 25, 1990, explicitly adopt a "'carrot and stick' approach" to sentencing. While the boldly instrumental use made of sentencing penalties and credits in these guidelines will trouble some, the larger question is whether the Commission's social engineering will work. Two issues stand out: First, is the Commission's carrot mightier than its stick? At first glance, this may seem a surprising question because the "stick" in the Commission's guidelines seemingly packs a Ruthian wallop: fines under the draft guidelines are based on a multiple of the …