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History’s Challenge to Criminal Law Theory

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Abstract

After briefly sketching an historical account of criminal law that emphasizes its longstanding reach into social, commercial and personal life outside the core areas of criminal offenses, this paper explores why criminal law theory has never succeeded in limiting the content of criminal codes to offenses that fit the criteria of dominant theories, particularly versions of the harm principle. Early American writers on criminal law endorsed no such limiting principles to criminal law, and early American criminal law consequently was substantively broad. But even with the rise of theories in the mid-nineteenth century that sought to limit criminal law’s reach, codified offenses continued to widely and deeply regulate social life and exceed the limits of those normative arguments. This essay suggests that this practical failure of criminal law theory occurred because it was never adopted by an institutional actor that could limit offense definitions in accord with normative commitments. Legislatures are institutionally unsuited to having their policy actions limited by principled arguments, and courts passed on the opportunity to incorporate a limiting principle for criminal law once they began, in the Lochner era, actively regulating legislative decisions through Constitutional law. The one avenue through which criminal law theory has had some success in affecting criminal codes is through the influence of specialized bodies that influence legislation, especially the American Law Institute advocacy of the Model Penal Code. But the institutional structure of American criminal law policymaking permits an unusually small role for such specialized bodies, and without such an institutional mechanism, criminal law theory is likely to continue to have little effect on actual criminal codes.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Hay et al. (1975).

  2. Dubber (2005, Chap. 4).

  3. 61 Mass. (7 Cush.) 53, (Mass. 1851).

  4. Novak (1996, pp. 19–21) (“Commonwealth v. Alger occupied a central place in nineteenth century jurisprudence.”).

  5. See, e.g., Revised Code of Va., Chap. 138 (1819).

  6. Mayo v. Wilson, 1 N.H. 53 (N.H. 1817) (upholding a civil challenge to an arrest under criminal statute); Laws of N.H. at 346–49 (1815) (defining “Crimes … Profanation of Sabbath).

  7. For a relatively modern example of this sort of longstanding statute, see Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972). Jacksonville Ordinance Code § 26—57 held to be unconstitutionally vague in that case defined criminal vagrancy to include:

    ‘Rogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging, common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, … persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, disorderly persons, persons neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting houses of ill fame, gaming houses, or places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, persons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children ….

  8. Laws of the State of New York, 2 vols. (Albany, N.Y. 1813), 2 (1813), c. 86 (R.L.), 363–70. A Digest of the Laws of New Jersey, 1709–1861, 300 (John T. Nixon ed.) (3d ed. 1861); W. Novak (1996, pp. 57–58).

  9. See W. Novak (1996, p. 61); see, e.g., Fisher v. McGirr, 67 Gray 1 (Mass. 1854) (describing and approving criminal sanctions for gunpowder regulation).

  10. This account of criminal law’s substantive scope is consistent with Gerald Leonard’s history of American criminal law theory, in which he recounts a dominant view in favor of criminal law as a tool for prevention of social harm with relatively little regard for culpability, a position that was gradually supplanted by the familiar one limiting guilt to those with individual responsibility and moral culpability. See Leonard (2003).

  11. Commonwealth v. Alger, 61 Mass. (7 Cush.) 53, 85 (1851). Around the same time as Alger, Thorpe v. Rutland & Burlington Railroad, 27 Vt. 140, 156 (1854), provided another oft-cited statement of this expansive view of legislative authority for civil and criminal regulation:

    One with any degree of familiarity with this subject would never question the right depending upon invincible necessity … to subject persons and property to such regulations as the public security and health may require, regardless of private convenience …. [D]oubts in regard to the extent of governmental authority come from those who have had small experience.

  12. See Traux v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33 (1915) (describing and holding unconstitutional an Arizona statute).

  13. See Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908) (holding statute unconstitutional).

  14. Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U.S. 105 (1928) (holding statute unconstitutional).

  15. See, e.g., Dwyer v. Colorado, 261 p. 858, 859 (Colo. 1927) (approving criminal regulation of dance halls).

  16. Dubber (2005, at p. xii); Freund (1904, p. 2 & n. 2).

  17. Blackstone (1979, p. 162), quoted in Dubber (2005, p. xii).

  18. See, e.g., Dubber (2005, p. 59) (citing Freund).

  19. Dubber (2005, pp. 47–93).

  20. Chipman (1833, pp. 46 & 209); see also Novak (1996, pp. 30–48).

  21. Quoted in Novak (1996, p. 31).

  22. See generally Novak (1996, Introduction and Chap. 1).

  23. See Dubber (2005, Chap. 4).

  24. Modern constitutional law has of course developed some limitations on what activity government can criminalize or otherwise regulate. See, e.g., Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (1973).

  25. See, e.g., Jefferson (1984, p. 285) (“the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”). See also Beccaria (1764, pp. 17–21).

  26. Compare, e.g., Duff (1990, pp. 111–112), and Gardner (2007, pp. 30–32).

  27. See generally, Feinberg (1984).

  28. Husak (2008, Chaps. 2 & 3).

  29. See also Hall (1960, pp. 221–222) (argued that the principle of harm is “an essential organizational construct” of the criminal law).

  30. Harcourt (1999); Lacey et al. (2003).

  31. 395 U.S. 444 (1969) (criminal syndicalism statute violates First Amendment).

  32. 403 U.S. 15 (1971).

  33. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) (overturning statute criminalizing contraceptive use by married couples); see also Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972) (extending Griswold to overturn ban on contraception for unmarried people).

  34. 388 U.S. 1, 6 & n. 5 (1967) (listing states that abolished miscegenation crimes); Wadlington (1966, p. 1189, n. 2) (noting that only seventeen states still had antimiscegenation laws in 1966).

  35. 539 U.S. 558 (2003).

  36. Commonwealth v. Campbell, 117 S.W. 383 (Ky. 1909).

  37. Commonwealth v. Bonadio, 415 A.2d 47 (Pa. 1980). See also State v. Douglas, 21 Misc.2d 551, 202 N.Y.S.2d 160 (N.Y. 1959) (citing Mill in overturning an obscenity statute on First Amendment grounds).

  38. See, e.g., Picou v. Gillum, 874 F.2d 1519 (11th Cir. 1989); Commonwealth v. Kautz, 491 A.2d 864 (Pa. Super. 1985).

  39. The now-definitive history of the Model Code’s effect on reform of sodomy statutes is. Eskridge (2008, pp. 118–126, 144–147, 161–165).

  40. See Eskridge (2008).

  41. See Eskridge (2008). For some of these arguments, see Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

  42. Gardner (2007, pp. 29–30).

  43. Stuntz (2001); Husak (2008).

  44. I hold aside here courts’ significant power to expand statutes’ reach through broad interpretation, which one might argue is a form of creating new crimes.

  45. Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Baldridge, 278 U.S. 105 (1928) (in action brought to enjoin enforcement of criminal statute prohibiting non-pharmacists from owning pharmacies, statute held to violate Fourteenth Amendment due process rights).

  46. Adair v. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908) (overturning misdemeanor conviction of railroad agent who discharged an employee based on his union membership, holding that the statute violated defendant’s Fifth Amendment Due Process right to liberty and property).

  47. Dwyer v. Colorado, 82 Colo. 574, 576, 261 p. 858, 859 (1927) (affirming conviction for operating unlicensed dance hall and holding criminal statute does not violate due process).

  48. For an example of state crime commission successfully recommending repeal of criminal offenses, see Va. State Crime Comm’n, The Reorganization and Restructuring of Title 18.2 (2004) (recommending the revision of Virginia’s criminal penalties). See also Act of Apr. 12, 2004, ch. 459, 2004 Va. Acts 657 (repealing crimes suggested by commission).

  49. Ashworth (2000). Moreover, some scholars are skeptical of the Law Commission’s proposals for criminal law reform. See Gardner (2007, pp. 33–55).

  50. See, e.g., Gardner (2007, p. 33).

  51. As a representative year, I use figures from Bureau of Justice Statistics (1998, tbl. 5.4). For more recent data showing comparable contrasts, see Sabol et al. (2007).

  52. Barker (2004, 2006). Barker’s four types of state political structures or types of governance are populist, participatory democracy, pragmatism, and patronage-oriented. See Barker (2006, p. 10 & tbl. 1).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kim Ferzan and Doug Husak, co-directors of the Rutgers University Institute for Law and Philosophy, for inviting me to participate in the conference on criminal law theory at which this paper was presented. I thank the participants there for their comments, and especially Doug Husak and Paul Robinson for close readings and extensive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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    Darryl Brown

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Brown, D. History’s Challenge to Criminal Law Theory. Criminal Law, Philosophy 3, 271–287 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-009-9075-8

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