- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Selected Robinson Bibliography
- List of Tables and Figures
-
PART } I The Nature of Judgments about Justice -
1 } Judgments about Justice as Intuitional and Nuanced -
2 } Judgments about Justice as a Human Universal: Agreements on a Core of Wrongdoing -
3 } The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice -
4 } Disagreements about Justice -
5 } Changing People’s Judgments of Justice -
Part } II Should the Criminal Law Care What the Lay Person Thinks Is Just? -
6 } Current Law’s Deference to Lay Judgments of Justice -
7 } Current Law’s Conflicts with Lay Judgments of Justice -
8 } Normative Crime Control: The Utility of Desert -
9 } Building Moral Credibility and the Disutility of Injustice -
10 } Deviations from Empirical Desert -
11 } Implications for Criminal Justice and Other Reform -
PART } III The Content of Lay Judgments of Justice -
12 } Rules of Conduct: Doctrines of Criminalization -
13 } Rules of Conduct: Doctrines of Justification -
14 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Culpability -
15 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Excuse -
16 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Grading -
17 } Law-Community Agreement and Conflict, and Its Implications -
PART } IV Empirical Studies of Lay Judgments of Justice as a Law and Policy Tool -
18 } Explaining History: Shifting Views of Criminality -
19 } Testing Competing Theories: Blackmail -
20 } Testing Competing Theories: Justification Defenses -
21 } Guiding Judicial Discretion: Extralegal Punishment Factors -
22 } Intuitions of Justice & the Utility of Desert - Table of Cases
- Table of MPC
- Index
Current Law’s Deference to Lay Judgments of Justice
Current Law’s Deference to Lay Judgments of Justice
- Chapter:
- (p.97) 6 }Current Law’s Deference to Lay Judgments of Justice
- Source:
- Intuitions of Justice and the Utility of Desert
- Author(s):
Paul H. Robinson
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter discusses how current American criminal law often quietly defers to lay judgments of justice. It first considers three sorts of rules common in modern criminal codes that reflect a deference to lay judgments of justice: recognizing excuse defenses; failing to take account of factors relevant to coercive crime-control principles; and creating a false impression that resulting harm is significant by including result elements in offense definitions. It then discusses the vagueness of the standards used in doctrinal formulations and how it reinforces the deference to lay judgments. One plausible explanation for the deference to lay intuitions of justice is that the drafters understood, although they did not make it explicit, that a criminal code could not openly conflict with the community's shared intuitions of justice without losing moral credibility with the community it governs, and that such a loss of credibility would undermine the criminal law's crime-control power.
Keywords: American criminal law, lay judgments, justice, Model Penal Code, criminal law
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Selected Robinson Bibliography
- List of Tables and Figures
-
PART } I The Nature of Judgments about Justice -
1 } Judgments about Justice as Intuitional and Nuanced -
2 } Judgments about Justice as a Human Universal: Agreements on a Core of Wrongdoing -
3 } The Origins of Shared Intuitions of Justice -
4 } Disagreements about Justice -
5 } Changing People’s Judgments of Justice -
Part } II Should the Criminal Law Care What the Lay Person Thinks Is Just? -
6 } Current Law’s Deference to Lay Judgments of Justice -
7 } Current Law’s Conflicts with Lay Judgments of Justice -
8 } Normative Crime Control: The Utility of Desert -
9 } Building Moral Credibility and the Disutility of Injustice -
10 } Deviations from Empirical Desert -
11 } Implications for Criminal Justice and Other Reform -
PART } III The Content of Lay Judgments of Justice -
12 } Rules of Conduct: Doctrines of Criminalization -
13 } Rules of Conduct: Doctrines of Justification -
14 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Culpability -
15 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Excuse -
16 } Principles of Adjudication: Doctrines of Grading -
17 } Law-Community Agreement and Conflict, and Its Implications -
PART } IV Empirical Studies of Lay Judgments of Justice as a Law and Policy Tool -
18 } Explaining History: Shifting Views of Criminality -
19 } Testing Competing Theories: Blackmail -
20 } Testing Competing Theories: Justification Defenses -
21 } Guiding Judicial Discretion: Extralegal Punishment Factors -
22 } Intuitions of Justice & the Utility of Desert - Table of Cases
- Table of MPC
- Index
