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Criminal Law: Part 2

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An Introduction to American Law

University of Pennsylvania

4.8 (2,069 ratings) | 76K Students Enrolled

This course will give you a glimpse into six different areas of American law: Tort Law, Contract Law, Property, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Civil Procedure. You will gain insight into the complexities and dilemmas that arise from the application of law in different settings, and what is distinctive about American approaches.

Skills You'll Learn

American Law, Common Law, Law, Constitution

Reviews

4.8 (2,069 ratings)

5 stars
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DM

Sep 24, 2016

Very comprehensive-- thoroughly enjoyed the lectures on the Constitution. Thought I needed more time for the additional readings; however, inclusion of a quasi-text (or text) was great. Thank you.

SH

Sep 01, 2018

Basic introduction to American Law, equivalent to the first week or so of what would be taught in law school for each subject. Not comprehensive by any means, but it covers the basics very well.

From the lesson

Criminal Law

In this module, Professor Morse will focus on the basics of criminal law, an area of law so exciting that countless TV shows and movies have been based on it. The major aspects of criminal law will be discussed - why we impose punishment, when we impose the most punishment, and how the state proves a criminal case. Defenses to criminal charges, which are divided into justifications and excuses will also be addressed.

Criminal Law: Part 1 16:02

Criminal Law: Part 2 14:43

Taught By

Anita Allen
Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
Shyam Balganesh
Professor of Law
Stephen Morse
Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law; Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry; Associate Director, Center for Neuroscience & Society
Theodore Ruger
Dean and Bernard G. Segal Professor of Law
Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
Assistant Professor of Law and Psychology
Tobias Barrington Wolff
Professor of Law

Transcript

[MUSIC]

With the goals of criminal law that we discussed before the break,

retribution and crime control, in mind.

Let us turn to how society defines criminal behavior.

It is often said that the entire body of

criminal law can be described by two principles.

The harm principle and the fault principle.

The harm princ, principle tries to pick out those behaviors that produce such

substantial and unjustified harms, or such risk of harm,

that the criminal law is the appropriate response.

Some harms, such as the use of force, theft, and

fraud are the so called core of the criminal law.

Familiar examples are homicide, rape, arson, and stealing another's property.

They involve substantial harm to others, and their prohibition is

uncontroversial and found in all mature systems of criminal law.

In the last century however, and increasingly in recent decades.

Criminal law is used to address a wide variety of potentially

problematic activities that are none the less not obviously sufficiently clear

violations of the duties we owe each other to warrant societal blame and punishment.

For example, do you think that a person should be convicted of a crime and

sentenced to prison for

passing oneself off as the war hero by wearing medals the person did not earn?

It's insensitive and immoral behavior like intentional emotional cruelty, but

should it be regulated with criminal law and potential imprisonment?

Congress thought so and passed the stolen valor act of 2013,

which the President signed into law.

Should prostitution be a crime?

Or should it be dealt with by public health measures and

other forms of non criminal regulation?

Such expansive use of the criminal law is controversial.

Because it is not clear that criminal law regulation is

morally appropriate and necessary.

And employing the criminal law when it is not appropriate, and

not necessary tends to undermine the moral message that the criminal law

distinctively is meant to convey.

A current example of the issue of the appropriate use of the criminal law

is the extensive law enforcement approach to branding the use

recreational use of abusable drugs, other than alcohol and nicotine, of course.

There's substantial debate about whether criminal law regulation as

the primary means to prevent drug use is a wise and cost effective policy.

More generally, criminal law as a regulatory tool, has become so expansive.

That is unclear that the harm principle is now use to

limit the proper reach of the criminal law.

It is often said that our Federal system provides 51 laboratories,

the 50 states, and the Federal Penal Code for trying to produce the best policies.

This permits substantial experimentation and responsiveness to differing values and

attitudes in different jurisdictions rather than a one size fits all approach.

Moreover in our legal order, the Constitution places almost no

limits on the ability of a jurisdiction to criminalize an activity.

That is, the various states and

the federal government have essentially no restrictions on the type of

conduct within their jurisdiction, that they can prohibit using the criminal law.

Exceptions are infrequent, are never usually based on

a conflict between the prohibition and another constitutional value.

To return to the example of the stolen valor act raised shortly ago.

The Supreme Court found an earlier version of the act that prohibited lying about

military heroics unconstitutional,

because it violated the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

Otherwise, it would have been perfectly acceptable to criticize such unsavory, but

not terribly harmful behaviour.

Another unusual example,

is a case in which the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to blame and

punish a person simply for the status of being a drug addict.

Not for use, not for possession, but simply for

the status of being a drug addict.

Because statuses are not actions.

They are not behavior and thus they are beyond the reach of the criminal law.

But such instances are indeed unusual.

Despite the variation that our federal system permits there are none

the less substantial similarities among the various criminal codes,

that they all start from similar legal and cultural heritage.

Now let us turn to the fault principle.

This is the principle that guides who deserves criminal blame and

punishment for the behavior that we wish to prevent using the criminal law.

Examples of such behaviors are killing conduct, non-consensual sexual contacts,

burning of buildings, takings of another property, and the like.

All these harms can be caused without fault if a person was

acting as carefully as one could expect under the circumstances, but

caused an accident nonetheless.

Accidents happen without fault.

Indeed, the only way to prevent all accidents would be to completely cease

all interpersonal human interaction.

When innocently cause harms occur such cases are occasions for

regret, but hardly for criminal blame and punishment.

Indeed if the harm doer, and note that I say harm doer and

not wrong doer was sufficiently careful victims of

the accident would not even be entitled to tort damages.

Because the harm doer did not violate the reasonable standard of

care that is the touchstone of tort liability.

So if causing a harmful result by one's behavior is not a sufficient condition for

blame and punishment, what is the essence of the fault principle?

We can best start to explore this question with a quote from

former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Justice Holmes wrote that even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over

and being kicked.

Just so the law and ordinary morality, I should add, assess for

not just on the basis of results or outcomes of our behavior, but

more importantly on the basis of the mental state with which the person acted.

An intended harm, a violent kick of an enemy is vastly more

blameworthy than an accidental kick that is equally painful to the victim.

Mental states are the royal road to moral fall.

The mental state with which a person engages in potentially harmful

behavior is the best indication of the person's attitudes towards the rights and

interests of fellow people.

If someone is being as careful as humanly possible, then the person has

manifested complete respect for the rights and interests of others.

If the person has intentionally caused the harm without any justification then

the person has demonstrated that the rights and

interests of the victim do not matter.

Such indifference is the essence of moral fault and blameworthiness.

The mental states that make conduct criminal violations are knows

as the mens rea.

This is an old Latin term that literally means a guilty mind.

But this is misleading.

A more precise meaning would be the mental state that is

part of the definition that makes a specific behavior a crime.

There is nothing problematic about forming intentions.

We do it unproblematically all the time.

I am intentionally delivering this lecture and

you are intentionally listen, listening to it.

But there is nothing criminal about delivering or viewing an academic lecture.

But as we just saw, the mental states that accompany various

potentially harmful behaviors distinguish how blameworthy the person is.

Is the combination of acting in prohibited ways coupled with a mental state

indicating culpability that are the pre-conditions for fault.

The criminal law is littered with mental state terms that are parts of

the criteria for crime.

Often such terms are confusing.

But, in the last half century, a law reform organization based in Philadelphia,

the American Law Institute, has published a model penal code

that identifies blame worthy mental states with some care.

Although it is only a model code, and it is not binding on any jurisdiction,.

It has had enormous influence on the reform and

evolution of criminal law, since it was published in the early 1960's.

It identifies four culpable Mental States.

Purpose, Knowledge, Recklessness, and Negligence.

Let me use an oversimplified example of homicide to define them for you.

Purpose has it's ordinary language meaning.

That is, to do something on purpose.

The result is your conscious goal.

So if I kill purposely, this means that I meant to kill the victim,

I did it on purpose.

Knowledge means simply that you are aware of some fact, or

practically certain that it is true.

Suppose for example I want to blow up a plane to destroy the cargo so

that I can collect insurance proceeds.

The crew, of course, dies in the explosion.

Was it my true purpose to kill them?

Not necessarily, I may even have foolishly hoped that a miracle would occur, and

that they wouldn't die.

Nevertheless, I knew it was practically certain that the crew would die and

I would be guilty of knowing homicide.

To define the other culpable mental state terms, recklessness and negligence.

Let us return to the example of our speeding driver which this

lecture used earlier.

The driver certainly did not have the goal that someone should die and

he was not practically certain that someone would be killed as a result of

his enormously dangerous driving.

But he created an immense amount of risk of death.

That was completely unjustified under the circumstances.

Recklessness means that the person is actually aware of a risk he is creating.

It is actually in his mind,

but he decides to run that risk despite recognizing the danger.

The driver would thus be guilty of reckless homicide if he

was actually aware of the risk of set, of death or serious bodily injury, but

he decided to run the light anyhow for no reason with any social justification.

Negligence is defined as being unaware of a risk a person has created.

But under conditions in which a reasonable law abiding citizen should have

been aware of the risk.

The person that's failed to pay the kind of attention we expect of

each other when creating unjustified risks.

Even if our driver was somehow not aware of the risk of death or

serious bodily harm he was creating by his dangerous driving.

He certainly should have been aware.

In criminal law, the amount of risk that must be created for

criminal liability is greater than in tort law, reflecting the criminal law's

concern with sufficient culpability to justify, state blame, and punishment.

Remember that I said that the mental states acc, mental state accompanying

behavior is an indication of the person's attitudes towards the rights and

interests of others who might be effected by the behavior.

The more indifferent someone is, the more blame worthy.

And they are almost certainly more dangerous if they are more indifferent.

The four mental states I have defined, purpose, knowledge,

recklessness, negligence, represent an imperfect, but

good hierarchy of different levels of blame worthiness.

To continue the homicide example, killing purposely or

knowingly is more indifferent and generally more dangerous than killing by

the creation of risk with awareness of the risk.

Which is in turn more blameworthy than killing without awareness of risk, but

one, but when one should have been aware of the risk.

And the severity of punishments that may be imposed reflect such different levels

of blame worthiness, even when the result, such as death, is the same.

There is one major exception to the full principle in the United States

criminal law.

So called crimes of strict liability.

These permit criminal blame and

punishment, simply for engaging in the preminal, in the prohibited conduct.

Even if one's behavior was blameless.

For example, shipping certain goods in interstate commerce without

a proper label may be a crime.

Imagine a midsize business that is a wholesaler and

distributer of pharmaceuticals.

The firm packages and labels the drugs before shipping them.

Suppose one batch is not properly labeled,

all though the firm management had instituted exceptionally fine training and

quality control for the labeling process there is no perfect process.

Innocent accidents happen, and the business and it's officers are blameless.

Depending on the circumstances the officers and perhaps the business itself

are nonetheless criminally liable, and may be blamed and punished.

Such crimes largely address public health and

safety issue and carry light punishments and stigma, but not always.

Some strict liability crimes carry heavy penalties.

Such crimes, and there are many, many in contemporary criminal codes.

Are extremely controversial because they potentially blame and

punish people engaging in legitimate activities in blameless fashion.

Given the immense importance of fault in criminal law, the question is whether it

is fair to use the criminal law to regulate such behavior.

Especially since other forms of regulations such as civil fines might be

equally effective.

Having considered the harm and fault principles that guide the definition of

crime, we will turn to the actual structure of criminal guilt after a break.

[MUSIC]

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