Overcriminalization The Limits of the Criminal Law

by Husak, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780195399011
• ISBN10: 0195399013
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-11-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The United States today suffers from too much criminal law and too much punishment. Husak describes the phenomena in some detail and explores their relation, and why these trends produce massive injustice. His primary goal is to defend a set of constraints that limit the authority of states to enact and enforce penal offenses. The book urges the weight and relevance of this topic in the real world, and notes that most Anglo-American legal philosophers have neglected it. Husak's secondary goal is to situate this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. He argues that many of the resources to reduce the size and scope of the criminal law can be derived from within the criminal law itself-even though these resources have not been used explicitly for this purpose. Additional constraints emerge from a political view about the conditions under which important rights such as the right implicated by punishment-may be infringed. When conjoined, these constraints produce what Husak calls a minimalist theory of criminal liability. Husak applies these constraints to a handful of examples-most notably, to the justifiability of drug proscriptions.

Author Biography

Douglas Husak is Professor of Philosophy and Law at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

The Amount of Criminal Law	p. 3
Too Much Punishment, Too Many Crimes	p. 4
How Mare Crimes Produce Injustice	p. 17
The Content of New Offenses	p. 33
An Example of Overcriminalization	p. 45
Internal Constraints on Criminalization	p. 55
The "General Part" of Criminal Law	p. 58
From Punishment to Criminalization	p. 77
A Right Not to Be Punished?	p. 92
Malum Prohibitum	p. 103
External Constraints on Criminalization	p. 120
Infringing the Right Not to Be Punished	p. 122
The Devil in the Details	p. 132
Crimes of Risk Prevention	p. 159
Alternative Theories of Criminalization	p. 178
Law and Economics	p. 180
Utilitarianism	p. 188
Legal Moralism	p. 196
Table of Cases	p. 207
Bibliography	p. 209
Index	p. 225
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.