Second Look Provisions in the Proposed Model Penal Code Revisions

Should the Model Penal Code’s Mens Rea Provisions Be Amended

Do the Model Penal Code’s (MPC) provisions on mental states need revision? The question might seem preposterous. After all, many believe that these provisions count as the MPC’s greatest achievement: they clarify and simplify mental state categories, and replace an undifferentiated focus on the mens rea of an offense with a more careful focus on the mens rea for each element of an offense. The ...

Pathological Intoxication and the Model Penal Code

The Model Penal Code Second: Might “Film Schools” Be in Need of a Remake?

In a galaxy far, far away—a typical law school classroom—the quality of discussion of criminal codes and doctrines might fairly be described as in disastrous condition. Indeed, it is probably overly generous to characterize the typical law school criminal law course as being about modern criminal codes and doctrines at all, at least if one assumes that, at a minimum, such a course should review...

Revising the Model Penal Code: Keeping It Real

In deciding whether to reform or revise a document or institution, one must first address what the subject of the reform effort is. Before deciding whether the institution is serving its purposes well or badly, in other words, we must ask ourselves what purposes it is supposed to serve. The MPC is and does a number of things, though I suspect its predominantly academic audience of today is cons...

Why the Model Penal Code's Sexual Offense Provisions Should Be Pulled and Replaced

By all accounts, the Model Penal Code is enormously respected and influential. Yet, relatively soon after the Code’s 1962 publication, the Code’s sexual offense provisions and even its 1980 revised Commentaries were already considered outdated. The rapid onslaught of the sexual and feminist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s brought an intense momentum to change rape laws that the Code had, in ...