The appearance of the privilege against self-incrimination the guaranty that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"' was a landmark event in the history of Anglo-American criminal procedure. Prior historical scholarship has located the origins of the common law privilege in the second half of the seventeenth century, as part of the aftermath of the c...

During recent years, scholars have asked whether scientific discoveries should have implications for criminal law. Specifically, some argue that findings in genetics and neuroscience will or should alter our assumption that most adults are responsible for their conduct. Criminal law should rest on a proper understanding of human behavior, and, therefore, scholars should mine scientific explanat...

tain or discharge as they please, and he is aware of the very real risk of discrediting the role of psychology if too much is claimed for it. '' A great dis-service to future -progress may result unless zeal is combined with prudence and sound judgment. We must accept the fact that we may learn much about the psychological factors associated with criminal conduct and yet fail to help the crimin...

The term “plea bargaining”has become a label often used to describe a series of disparate mechanisms to investigate,prosecute,and adjudicate criminal liability. For some,plea bargaining is the indispensable tool to address criminal conduct,while for others it has become a symbol of coercion and injustice. The purpose of this Article will be to distinguish the very different mechanisms that are ...

Internet use is characterised by externalities, which means that it can be sufficiently profitable for criminal enterprises to flourish. One possible mechanism which could be considered to improve incentives is liability. We conduct a review of the literature relating to liability theory, liability online, and security economics in general and consider the impact that liability on any particula...

In four empirical studies, we showed that laypeople apply the ignorance of the law defense differently depending on the perceived morality of the defendant’s course of conduct at the time of the illegal act. Moral and neutral defendants who pled ignorance of the law were afforded leniency, whereas immoral defendants were sentenced as though they were not ignorant, even when defendants in all th...

OBJECTIVE To study the relationships between retrospective reports of exposure to interparental violence in childhood and rates of psychosocial adjustment problems in young adulthood in a birth cohort of New Zealand subjects. METHOD Data were gathered during the course of an 18 year longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1,265 New Zealand children. At age 18 retrospective reports of exposure...

Is there too much criminal law? Are there too many overlapping criminal statutes, covering too much conduct, resulting in sentences that are too long? Douglas Husak says yes, and in this splendid book offers an original and persuasive explanation for why that is so. His argument for a “minimalist” conception of criminal law takes an elegant form. Chapters 2 and 3, which contain Husak’s theory a...