Online research in philosophy

There is a “revolving door” between federal agencies and the industries regulated by them. Often, at the end of their industry tenure, key industry personnel seek employment in government regulatory entities and vice versa. The flow of workers between the two sectors could bring about good. Industry veterans might have specialized knowledge that could be useful to regulatory bodies and former government employees could help businesses become and remain compliant with regulations. But the “revolving door” also poses at least three ethical and policy challenges that have to do with public trust and fair representation. First, the presence of former key industry personnel on review boards could adversely impact the public’s confidence in regulatory decisions about new technology products, including agrifood biotechnologies. Second, the ‘‘revolving door’’ may result in policy decisions about technologies that are biased in favor of industry interests. And third, the ‘‘revolving door’’ virtually guarantees industry a voice in the policy-making process, even though other stakeholders have no assurance that their concerns will be addressed by regulatory agencies. We believe these three problems indicate a failure of regulatory review for new technologies. The review process lacks credibility because, at the very least, it is procedurally biased in favor of industry interests. We argue that prohibiting the flow of personnel between regulatory agencies and industry would not be a satisfactory solution to the three problems of public trust and just representation. To address them, regulatory entities must reject the traditional notion of objectivity. Instead they should adopt the conception of objectivity developed by Sandra Harding and re-configure their regulatory review on the basis of it. That will ensure that a heterogeneous group of stakeholders is at the decision-making table. The fair representation of interests of different constituencies in the review process could do much to inspire warranted public confidence in regulatory protocols and decisions.

This paper discusses the cases where the perpetrator of a crime has obtained proceeds by committing such crime (the predicate crime) and subsequently goes on to ‘launder’ such proceeds, thereby commiting the crime of ‘money laundering’. This raises the extremely frequent question of determining whether the perpetrator ought to be convicted and sentenced for both crimes (the predicate crime plus money laundering) or whether the punishment for the predicate crime should be sufficient. The issue amounts essentially to a discussion as to whether such accumulation of crimes would represent a cumulative conviction based upon conduct that should not be separately punished. The problem is relatively complex given that international law provisions regarding the crime of money laundering intentionally refrain from taking a position on this issue and a comparative law study reveals different solutions for the problem. The discussion focuses of the legal system of Portugal, where the 2004 reform of the Penal Code has addressed the matter by stating that there may be accumulation. In 2007, both the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Justice passed judgments agreeing with this view. The discussion of this issue has broader implications for the general understanding of the problem of concurrence or accumulation of crimes and is not confined to the question of money laundering. This is because both Courts tend to see this as just an instance of a rule of the General Part and not just a matter specific to one particular crime. In this manner, the paper engages a general discussion of the criteria for the accumulation of offenses for all crimes. In this regard, the generally held criteria of the difference or similarity between the interests protected by each crime is rejected, for being a conceptualistic approach. The paper affirms that the problem is best understood from the point of view of what should be the reaction of the legal system after any crime has been committed. The observation is made that the claim to apprehend and try the suspect, and seize the instruments and evidence of crime, is not backed by additional criminal offenses where the suspect does not cooperate with the enforcement of criminal law against himself or herself. Suspects do lie, run away from the police, and destroy evidence all the time. However, in liberal and democratic States, a suspect is not forced to cooperate with the machinery of criminal law against himself or herself, and therefore this lack of cooperation does not attract additional penalties. However, the accumulation of money laundering with the predicate offense breaks with this liberal rationale. Therefore, such accumulation of crimes is not warranted and should not take place. Note: Downloadable document is written in Portuguese.

Critics of corporate criminal liability argue that federal criminal law is far too broad, sanctions are imposed without fault, federal sentences are too harsh, and, finally, that federal prosecutors have too much power. This article makes two points about these critiques. First, although there is merit to each of these arguments, they cannot be limited to corporate criminal liability. Rather, critics of corporate criminal are exposing problems that are endemic to the federal criminal justice system. Indeed, these criticisms apply with even more force to other kinds of federal prosecutions, including those involving federal drug and firearms offenses.Second, reforming corporate criminal liability should not take priority over more general reform of federal criminal justice. Defendants in corporate and white collar crime cases are better equipped to challenge deficiencies in the system with elite legal counsel or by raising public awareness. Moreover, corporations hold great power in modern America and increasingly engage in socially harmful behavior. The law should not provide unique leniency to white collar and corporate defendants, but must in fact seek new ways to restrain corporate misconduct.

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed an extraordinary amount of police, legislative, judicial, scholarly, and community activity around hate crime. Such activity was attributable to a new "anti-hate-crime movement," conditions for which were created by the convergence in previous decades of two very different social movements - civil rights and victims' rights. This anti-hate-crime movement has been radiply assimilated into the institutions of criminal justice, with the result that anti-hate-crime measures now reflect the culture and priorities of those institutions. The civil rights and victims' rights movements created collective beliefs, structural resources, and political opportunities that facilitated the emergence of a social movement organized around hate crime and its victims. Hate crime laws were the most visible manifestation of the movement's legal impact, but represent but one aspect of a larger legal and societal response. Much of the success of the movement is attributable to the fact that anti-hate-crime measures fit easily into the values of the criminal justice system; however, that system remains weighted against hate crime victims and their communities. For target communities, the desire to be free from hate crime is inseparable from the desire to be free. Anti-hate-crime measures too frequently address the former but not the latter. To acheive its goal of systemic transformation of criminal justice, the anti-hate-crime movement must engage in critical self-reflection, invest in movement infrastructure, and recommit to challenging the very institutions of criminal justice with which it now cooperates.

This work provides, for the first time, a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both British and American criminal law and its underlying morality. It defends the view that human actions are volitionally caused body movements. This theory illuminates three major problems in drafting and implementing criminal law--what the voluntary act requirement does and should require, what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require, and when the two actions are the "same" for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The book contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy. It provides a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability for legislators, judges, and the lawyers who argue to them.

Recent years have seen mounting challenge to the model of the criminal trial on the grounds it is not cost-effective, not preventive, not necessary, not appropriate, or not effective. These challenges have led to changes in the scope of the criminal law, in criminal procedure, and in the nature and use of criminal trials. These changes include greater use of diversion, of fixed penalties, of summary trials, of hybrid civil–criminal processes, of strict liability, of incentives to plead guilty, and of preventive orders. The paper will assess the implications of these changes for the function of the criminal law, assessing the reasons behind them, and examining whether or not they are to be welcomed. Identifying the larger import of these changes draws attention to the changing relationship between state and citizen as well as changes in the nature of the state itself. These can in turn be attributed to a jostling among the different manifestations of the authoritarian state, the preventive state, and the regulatory state. These changes have profound normative implications for a liberal theory of the criminal law that require its re-articulation and its defence. A modest start may be to insist that where the conduct is criminal and the consequences are punitive the protections of criminal procedure and trial must be upheld.

The intuition holding that an organized crime leader should be punished more severely than a subordinate who directly commits an offence is commonly reflected in legal literature. However, positing a direct relationship between the severity of punishment and the level of seniority within an organizational hierarchy represents a departure from a more general idea found in much of the substantive criminal law writings: that the severity of punishment increases the closer the proximity to the physical commission of the offence. This paper presents an analysis of the said intuition and attempts to ascertain its roots. Rejecting both retribution and deterrence theory as valid explanations, it will be inferred that the imposition of harsher punishment on organized crime leaders is properly based on the multiplicity of offences for which they are responsible, and not the nature of their involvement in any specific offence.

This is a study of possession offences, with the focus on those intended to penalise the risk of a serious harm. Offences of this kind are examined in the light of basic doctrines of the criminal law, and in the light of the proper limits of endangerment offences. They are found wanting in both respects, and are also found to pose particular sentencing problems. The conclusion is that many risk-based possession offences are unfair, save those that require proof of a further intent or those aimed at a failure properly to safeguard a dangerous object.

First paragraph: The awesome range of Heike Jung’s work—over different aspects of criminal law, different jurisdictions and traditions, different disciplines and languages—makes life both easier and harder for contributors to his Festschrift: easier, because one can choose almost any criminal law topic and be confident that it will connect to his work; harder (for those with the British vices of monolingualism and intellectual parochialism), since one’s paper will display the linguistic, jurisdictional or intellectual limitations that Heike Jung’s work so impressively transcends. In an attempt to overcome some of those limitations, I will discuss a topic that concerns criminal trials and the scope of the criminal law, through the distinction between crimes (Straftaten) and ‘regulatory offences’ (Ordnungswidrigkeiten) which is more often formally drawn in Germany and other continental European systems than in English law.

The wrongness of rape -- Rationality and the rule of law in offences against the person -- Complicity and causality -- In defence of defences -- Justifications and reasons -- The gist of excuses -- Fletcher on offences and defences -- Provocation and pluralism -- The mark of responsibility -- The functions and justifications of criminal law and punishment -- Crime : in proportion and in perspective -- Reply to critics.