My Outline
I. Introduction to Criminal Law: Theories of Punishment & Constitutional Limitations on Crime, Criminal Statutes
a. Theories of Punishment-Ch. 2
i. Retributivists claim that punishment is justified because people deserve it. This is backwards looking, in that people are punished for crimes already committed
ii. Utilitarians believe that justification lies in the useful purposes that punishment serves (This theory is sometimes called Consequentalist, or Instrumentalist). This is forward looking, in that it looks at the benefits that will accrue from the imposition of punishment
iii. The 2 questions to consider by Hart are:
1. What is the general justifying aim of the criminal justice system? That is, why do we enact laws that define specified conduct as criminal and impose punishment for violations of those laws
2. To whom may punishment be applied and in what amount?
3. Some use the Utilitarian approach to answer these questions, some the Retributivists, and some use a combination.
iv. Punishment has 6 characteristics according to Greenwalt:
1. It is performed by, and directed at, agents who are responsible in some sense. God and humans can punish; hurricanes cannot.
2. It involves designedly harmful or unpleasant consequences
3. The consequences are usually preceded by a judgment of condemnation; the subject of punishment is explicitly blamed for committing a wrong
4. It is imposed by one who has authority to do so
5. It is imposed for a breach of some established rule of behavior
6. It is imposed on an actual or supposed violator of the rule of behavior
vii. Under Utilitarian Justifications, punishment should be admitted in as far as it promises to exclude some greater evil. There are 4 cases in which punishment ought not to be inflicted
a. Where it is groundless: where there is no mischief for it to prevent; the act not being mischievous upon the whole
b. Where it must be inefficacious: where it cannot act so as
he books for this kind of killing on the books. The best defense the legislature could have written was necessity. A retributivist may say that there was no moral wrong to this act.
They were originally sentenced to death, but the Queen commuted this to 6 months in prison.
1/11/06 Class Notes
Criminal law is primarily statutory. How they are created and interpreted is a really important issue. At it’s most simple level, crim law is a way of distributing punishment to individuals for a wrong done to us all. That is why it is people v. the individual.
Murder-Unjustified & Intentional taking of life.
1/12/06 Class
Amount and Proportionality of Punishment
Assaulitive Retribution-The view that we should treat criminals as noxious insects to be ground under the heel of society
