Criminal Law 4
Fall term, Block C
M,T,W 10:20 AM - 11:40 AM
Professor Carol Steiker
4 classroom credits LAW-12100A
This course considers the basic themes of substantive criminal law, including criminal responsibility, the significance of act, intent, causation and result, justification and excuse, and the rationales for punishment. General doctrinal principles of the criminal law and illustrative crimes are studied, including attempts, conspiracy, and the law of accomplice liability, defenses such as self-defense and insanity, and aspects of the law of homicide and rape. The course also considers some important issues in the administration of the criminal justice system, with special emphasis on the phenomenon of discretion. The rationales for allowing discretion, the proper scope of discretion, and the practical effects of discretion are examined in the context of particular institutional actors, with focus on prosecutorial charging discretion, the practice of plea bargaining, and current debates about sentencing discretion. The focus is not on criminal procedure in the conventional sense, but rather on the quintessentially substantive problem of understanding the criteria by which culpability and punishment are actually determined in the contemporary American criminal justice system.