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Law in Contemporary Society
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Robinson's DefenseThere are millions of lawyers doing millions of jobs all over the world, but there is something about the work of the criminal defense lawyer that makes many of us (and by "us" I mean us in law school and us, the general population) think, "Oh, I could never do that." But why, exactly, do we say this?Bucking the SystemWho Are These Criminals?How We JudgeWhy We IncarcerateThere are three possible goals of incarceration: rehabilitation, deterrence (both of the individual and of future actors) and punishment. Rehabilitation is a concept that no longer exists in the American penal system. Deterrence is successful at its most basic level: without any form of criminal justice, we would have anarchy. However, deterrence has taken on a far greater import in the discussion of the criminal law. Today, laws are written and sentences meted out with the (stated) belief that they will somehow deter the individual being incarcerated and any future actors who might be tempted to perform a similar crime. This notion is a fallacy. Too often, we use the crutch of deterrence to justify what we are really doing: punishing.DeterrencePunishmentConclusionWhat the Criminal Law is. -- By JohnSchwab - 21 Feb 2010You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" on the next line: # * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, JohnSchwab Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of that line. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated list |
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