Criminal Law Commons^™

Retribution For Rats: Cooperation, Punishment, And Atonement, Michael A. Simons

Vanderbilt Law Review

To mobsters, he is a "rat"; to drug dealers, a "snitch." To school children, he is a "tattletale"; to corporate executives, a "whistle- blower." To cops, he is an "informant"; to prosecutors, a "cooperator." By whatever name he is known, the person who betrays his associates to the authorities is almost universally reviled. In movies, on television, in literature, the cooperator embodies all that society holds in contempt: he is disloyal, deceitful, greedy, selfish, and weak. The cooperator, though, has long been a mainstay of our criminal justice system. For centuries, criminal defendants have received leniency in return for testimony …

The Death Penalty: Where Are We Now?, Robert Blecker

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Oil And Water: Why Retribution And Repentance Do Not Mix, Sherry F. Colb

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Retribution For Rats: Cooperation, Punishment, And Atonement, Michael A. Simons

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

To mobsters, he is a "rat"; to drug dealers, a "snitch." To school children, he is a "tattletale"; to corporate executives, a "whistleblower." To cops, he is an "informant"; to prosecutors, a "cooperator." By whatever name he is known, the person who betrays his associates to the authorities is almost universally reviled. In movies, on television, in literature, the cooperator embodies all that society holds in contempt: he is disloyal, deceitful, greedy, selfish, and weak.

The cooperator, though, has long been a mainstay of our criminal justice system. For centuries, criminal defendants have received leniency in return for testimony …

Citizenship And Severity: Recent Immigration Reforms And The New Penology, Teresa A. Miller

Journal Articles

Over the past twenty years, scholars of criminal law, criminology and criminal punishment have documented a transformation in the practices, objectives, and institutional arrangements underlying a range of criminal justice system functions that are at the heart of penal modernism. In contrast to the preceding eighty years of criminal justice practices that were progressively more modern in their belief in the rationality of the criminal offender and their concern for enhancing civilization through rehabilitative responses to criminality, these scholars note that since the mid-198''0s the relatively settled assumptions about the framework that shaped criminal justice and penal practices for nearly …

What Is And Is Not Pathological In Criminal Law, Kyron Huigens

Michigan Law Review

In a recent article in this law review, William J. Stuntz argues that criminal law in the United States suffers from a political pathology. The incentives of legislators are such that the notorious overcriminalization of American society is deep as well as broad. That is, not only are remote corners of life subject to criminal penalties - such things as tearing tags off mattresses and overworking animals - but now crimes are defined with the express design of easing the way to conviction. Is proof of a tangible harm an obstacle to using wire and mail fraud statutes to prosecute …

Prom Mom Killers: The Impact Of Blame Shift And Distorted Statistics On Punishment For Neonaticide, Lynne Marie Kohm, Thomas Scott Liverman

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Homicide In Aretaic Terms, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

No abstract provided.

Street Crime, Corporate Crime, And Theories Of Punishment: A Response To Brown, Kyron J. Huigens

Articles

In this response to Darryl Brown's important article, Street Crime, Corporate Crime, and the Contingency of Criminal Liability, Professor Huigens argues that Brown has chosen the wrong theory of punishment on which to rest his case for a more regulatory, less punitive, approach to street crime. Brown has chosen the best, most sophisticated consequentialist theory of punishment, as developed principally by Dan Kahan. However, consequentialist punishment theory of any kind has a significant drawback: it has no plausible conception of criminal fault. As a result, Brown is constrained to argue that the language of desert and retribution should be muted …

The Pathological Politics Of Criminal Law, William J. Stuntz

Michigan Law Review

Substantive criminal law defines the conduct that the state punishes. Or does it? If the answer is yes, it should be possible, by reading criminal codes (perhaps with a few case annotations thrown in), to tell what conduct will land you in prison. Most discussions of criminal law, whether in law reviews, law school classrooms, or the popular press, proceed on the premise that the answer is yes. Law reform movements regularly seek to broaden or narrow the scope of some set of criminal liability rules, always on the assumption that by doing so they will broaden or narrow the …

Briefing Paper On Problems In Redefining "Loss" (U.S. Sentencing Commission Economic Crime Symposium), Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

On October 12-13, 2000, the U.S. Sentencing Commission sponsored its Third Symposium On Crime and Punishment in the United States: Federal Sentencing Policy for Economic Crimes and New Technology Offenses. The afternoon of the first day of the meeting was devoted to discussing the concept of “loss” as a measurement of defendant culpability and offense seriousness. The conferees were divided into small groups to discuss discrete sub-issues relating to “loss” and its place in sentencing economic crimes under the Guidelines. Following the small group discussions, the discussion leaders (“facilitators”) addressed a plenary session of the conference to report on the …

A Strategy For Mercy, Robert L. Misner

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Dead End Of Deterrence, And Beyond, Kyron Huigens

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Continuing Payment Of One's Debt To Society: The German Model Of Felon Disenfranchisement As An Alternative, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Teshuva: A Look At Repentance, Forgiveness And Atonement In Jewish Law And Philosophy And American Legal Thought, Samuel J. Levine

Fordham Urban Law Journal

A discussion of the Jewish concept of "Teshuva," which provides the possibility of atonement for wrongdoings. The article explores the process of "Teshuva" in depth and describes its relationship and significance to modern criminal law.

Teshuva: A Look At Repentance, Forgiveness And Atonement In Jewish Law And Philosophy And American Legal Thought, Samuel J. Levine

Fordham Urban Law Journal

A discussion of the Jewish concept of "Teshuva," which provides the possibility of atonement for wrongdoings. The article explores the process of "Teshuva" in depth and describes its relationship and significance to modern criminal law.

Forgiveness And The Criminal Law: Forgiveness Through Medicinal Punishment, Dennis M. Cariello

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article discusses the role of forgiveness in criminal law, focusing specifically on the nature of forgiveness, how and when society should forgive wrongdoers, and the nature of punishment.

Forgiveness And The Criminal Law: Forgiveness Through Medicinal Punishment, Dennis M. Cariello

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article discusses the role of forgiveness in criminal law, focusing specifically on the nature of forgiveness, how and when society should forgive wrongdoers, and the nature of punishment.

Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith

Journal Articles

This paper is a defense of utilitarian penology, against the familiar retributivist charge that it promotes framing the innocent, and other charges similarly depending on the notion that utilitarianism encourages officials to deceive the public. Our defense proceeds from the striking fact that utilitarianism's critics do not cite textual evidence that the originators of utilitarian penology in fact endorsed punishing the innocent or deceiving the public. Instead, critics claim that these unsavory policies follow logically from the premises of utilitarianism. Our argument, in brief, is that the charge of framing the innocent rests on a misunderstanding of utilitarian penology. We …

Rethinking The Penalty Phase, Kyron Huigens

Articles

This article argues that the chaos of the US Supreme Court’s death penalty jurisprudence can be sorted with the use of a single point of clarification. That jurisprudence uses the term “culpability” – and similar terms, such as desert, responsibility, and blameworthiness – without regard to a critical ambiguity. We use “culpability” to refer to fault in wrongdoing, as reflected in “culpability elements” such as purpose or recklessness. We also use culpability to refer to eligibility for punishment, which is at issue in the defenses of insanity or minority. Death sentencing is structured around aggravating and mitigating factors, but aggravation …

Rights And Wrongs, John C.P. Goldberg

Michigan Law Review

If one were to ask an American lawyer or legal scholar for a definition of liberalism, her explanation would likely include mention of constitutional provisions such as the First and Fourth Amendments. This is because liberalism is today understood primarily as a theory of what government officials may not do to citizens. Its most immediate expression in law is thus taken to be those parts of the Bill of Rights that set limits on state action. This tendency to conceive of liberalism exclusively as a theory of rights against government is a twentieth century phenomenon. To be sure, liberalism has …

Revenge On Utilitarianism: Renouncing A Comprehensive Economic Theory Of Crime And Punishment, William L. Barnes Jr.

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Is Capital Punishment A Deterrent To Crime?, Greg Warren Colyer

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

Searching For The "Tail Of The Dog": Finding "Elements" Of Crimes In The Wake Of Mcmillan V. Pennsylvania, Richard G. Singer, Mark D. Knoll

Seattle University Law Review

Part II of this Article will examine the historical importance of punishment as a litmus test in the common law in finding the elements of an offense. In Part III, the historical approach used by federal courts when value or quantity was at issue will be analyzed in order to round out the pre-McMillan framework. Part IV will discuss the McMillan decision, as well as the post-McMillan regime. Part V will analyze Jones v. United States, the case now pending before the Court, in which the Court may have its last chance to correct the error of McMillan and …

When Bad Things Happen To Good Intentions: The Development And Demise Of A Task Force Examining The Drugs-Violence Interrelationship Symposium On Drug Crimes, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1994-1996, I was one of twenty-eight members of a Drugs-Violence Task Force, created to report to the United States Sentencing Commission specific findings, conclusions, and recommendations concerning the interrelationship (if any) between drugs and violence. Much of the controversy concerning how to approach the drugs-violence problem reflects two conflicting and long-held views of drugs and crime: the criminal justice view, which emphasizes detecting and punishing drug offenders, and the public health view, which advocates treating the drug addiction that leads some individuals to commit crime. Traditionally, the criminal justice view is associated with a “tough on crime” attitude that …

The Color Line Of Punishment, Jerome H. Skolnick

Michigan Law Review

If "the color line," (in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1903 phrase and prophecy) was to be the twentieth century's greatest challenge for the domestic life and public policy of the United States, the law has had much to do with drawing its shape. No surprise, this. By now, legal theorists accept that law does not advance in preordained fashion, immune from the sway of political interest, belief systems and social structure. Still, it is hard to exaggerate how powerfully the law has shaped the life chances of Americans of African heritage, for good or ill, and in ways that we scarcely …

Hard Cases, Carl E. Schneider

Articles

Robert Latimer was born in 1953 on a farm on the prairies of Saskatchewan and grew up to own a 1,280-acre farm. In 1980 he married, and that year Tracy, the first of four children, was born. During her birth, Tracy's brain was terribly damaged by lack of oxygen, and severe cerebral palsy ensued. By 1993 Tracy could laugh, smile, and cry, and she could recognize her parents and her siblings. But she could not understand her own name or even simple words like "yes" and "no." She could not swallow well and would so often vomit her parents kept …

Practicing Criminal Law: A Jewish Law Analysis Of Being A Prosecutor Or Defense Attorney, Michael J. Broyde

Faculty Articles

Our secular society cycles as to whether it glorifies defense attor­neys or prosecutors. Sometimes, we adore defense attorneys­ -- they are the lawyers who ensure that innocents are not punished, "L.A. Law" is the show to watch, and the attorneys to imitate. Other times, we revere prosecutors -- they are the lawyers who punish evil­doers, "Law and Order" is the show to watch, and the attorneys to imitate. Jewish tradition recognizes the inherent ethical difficulties with the conduct of both types of attorneys.

Jewish law recognizes that the societal imposition of the criminal justice system on citizens, who otherwise function …

Co-Opting Compassion: The Federal Victim's Rights Amendment, Lynne Henderson

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Ignorance Of Law Is An Excuse - But Only For The Virtuous, Dan M. Kahan

Michigan Law Review

It's axiomatic that "ignorance of the law is no excuse." My aim in this essay is to examine what the "mistake of law doctrine" reveals about the relationship between criminal law and morality in general and about the law's understanding of moral responsibility in particular. The conventional understanding of the mistake of law doctrine rests on two premises, which are encapsulated in the Holmesian epigrams with which I've started this essay. The first is liberal positivism. As a descriptive claim, liberal positivism holds that the content of the law can be identified without reference to morality: one needn't be a …