Should the Model Penal Code's Mens Rea Provisions Be Amended?

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 ...

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1962 publication, the Code’s sexual offense provisions and even its 1980 revised Commentaries were already considered outdated.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 ...

The Language of Mens Rea

. J.D. Candidate, Vanderbilt Law School; Ph. D. Candidate in Neuroscience, Vanderbilt University. . McKnight Land-Grant Professor & Associate Professor of Law, University of Minnesota; Executive Director of Education and Outreach, MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. . Coauthors listed beyond the second author are listed alphabetically by last name. . Harrison Foundati...

Culture, Cloaked in Mens Rea

Proof beyond reasonable doubt of the mens rea or state of mind associated with a particular crime is a requirement for the successful prosecution of all criminal defendants under our system of justice. In the legal jargon, it is part of the prosecution’s prima facie case. Concomitantly, criminal defendants may successfully challenge the case against them on the ground (among others) that the pr...

How Much Should Mind Matter? Mens Rea in Theft and Fraud Sentencing