Does one mens rea fit all?: Thoughts on Alexander's unified conception of criminal culpability

California Law Review

Volumn 88, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 955-

  Dressler, Joshua ^a  

^a NONE

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Indexed keywords

EID: 0041906856     PISSN: 00081221     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3481201     Document Type: Article

References (7)

1. Sandy Kadish has credited the late Glanville Williams with "rais[ing] the study of the substantive criminal law [in England] to a new plane." Sanford H. Kadish, Fifty Years of Criminal Law: An Opinionated Review, 87 CALIF. L. REV. 943, 950 (1999). On this side of the Atlantic, nobody deserves our appreciation more than Kadish for his nearly half-century of work in the fields of criminal law scholarship and penal reform. And, of course, his criminal law casebook, CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS PROCESSES: CASES AND MATERIALS, created with the late Monrad Paulsen in 1962 and now coauthored by Stephen Schulhofer, remains the standard by which all criminal law casebooks are measured.
2. Sandy Kadish has credited the late Glanville Williams with "rais[ing] the study of the substantive criminal law [in England] to a new plane." Sanford H. Kadish, Fifty Years of Criminal Law: An Opinionated Review, 87 CALIF. L. REV. 943, 950 (1999). On this side of the Atlantic, nobody deserves our appreciation more than Kadish for his nearly half-century of work in the fields of criminal law scholarship and penal reform. And, of course, his criminal law casebook, CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS PROCESSES: CASES AND MATERIALS, created with the late Monrad Paulsen in 1962 and now coauthored by Stephen Schulhofer, remains the standard by which all criminal law casebooks are measured.
3. See Larry Alexander, Insufficient Concern: A Unified Conception of Criminal Culpability, 88 CALIF. L. REV. 931 (2000).
4. Id. at 931.
5. Id. at 937.
6. See Larry Alexander, Reconsidering the Relationship Among Voluntary Acts, Strict Liability, and Negligence in Criminal Law, 7 SOC. PHIL. & POL'Y 84 (1990). In his present essay, Alexander candidly concedes that "most people's intuitions run against me on the issue of whether inadvertent negligence is culpable." Alexander, supra note 2 at 950. He is correct. I use a version of Alexander's hypothetical yuppie social climbers, Sam and Ruth, in my criminal law casebook, CASES AND MATERIALS ON CRIMINAL LAW 282 (2d ed. 1999), although I rely on an earlier version found in his Social Philosophy and Policy essay. In classes I have taught at Boalt Hall and McGeorge, students have overwhelmingly found the parents culpable. The students believe that the parents were, or should have been, aware of an unjustified risk, albeit perhaps statistically slight, to their infant's welfare when they
7. See Larry Alexander, Reconsidering the Relationship Among Voluntary Acts, Strict Liability, and Negligence in Criminal Law, 7 SOC. PHIL. & POL'Y 84 (1990). In his present essay, Alexander candidly concedes that "most people's intuitions run against me on the issue of whether inadvertent negligence is culpable." Alexander, supra note 2 at 950. He is correct. I use a version of Alexander's hypothetical yuppie social climbers, Sam and Ruth, in my criminal law casebook, CASES AND MATERIALS ON CRIMINAL LAW 282 (2d ed. 1999), although I rely on an earlier version found in his Social Philosophy and Policy essay. In classes I have taught at Boalt Hall and McGeorge, students have overwhelmingly found the parents culpable. The students believe that the parents were, or should have been, aware of an unjustified risk, albeit perhaps statistically slight, to their infant's welfare when they