Chapter 1: Criminal Law and Punishment in U.S. Society

Question 1

social reality of U.S. criminal law

Answer 1

the dual nature of U.S. criminal law divided into two categories: a small number of serious, core offenses and a large number of lesser crimes, or “everything else”

Question 2

criminal law imagination

Answer 2

the contributions of law, history, philosophy, the social sciences, and sometimes biology to explain the moral desires we wish to impose on the world

Question 3

Felonies against persons

Answer 3

the core offenses of murder, manslaughter, rape, kidnapping, and robbery

Question 4

Felonies against property

Answer 4

the core offenses of felonious theft, robbery, arson, and burglary

Question 5

hard punishment

Answer 5

a sentence of a year or more in prison

Question 6

police power

Answer 6

all federal, state, and local governments’ executive, legislative, and judiciary’s power, including uniformed police officers, to carry out and enforce the criminal law

Question 7

torts

Answer 7

private wrongs for which you can sure the party who wronged you and recover money

Question 8

compensatory damages

Answer 8

damages recovered by tort plaintiffs for their actual injuries

Question 9

punitive damages

Answer 9

damages recovered by tort plaintiffs to punish the defendant for their “evil behavior”

Question 10

mala in se crimes

Answer 10

offenses that require some level of criminal intent

Question 11

mala prohibita offenses

Answer 11

offenses that are crimes only because a specific statute or ordinance prohibits them

Question 12

felonies

Answer 12

crimes punishable by death or confinement in the state’s prison for one year to life without parole

Question 13

misdemeanors

Answer 13

offenses punishable by fine and/or confinement in the local jail for up to one year

Question 14

State criminal codes

Answer 14

criminal law created by elected representatives in state legislatures

Question 15

Municipal codes

Answer 15

criminal law created by city and town councils elected by city residents

Question 16

U.S. Criminal Code

Answer 16

criminal law created by U.S. Congress

Question 17

Administrative agencies

Answer 17

appointed participants in creating criminal law that assist U.S. Congress

Question 18

Criminal court opinions

Answer 18

create criminal law by interpreting state and municipal criminal codes

Question 19

Criminal law enforcement agencies

Answer 19

create criminal law through informal discretionary law making to decide how the criminal law process works on a day-to-day basis

Question 20

codified

Answer 20

written definitions of crimes and punishment enacted by legislatures and published

Question 21

Model Penal Code (MPC)

Answer 21

proposed criminal code drafted by the American Law Institute and used to reform criminal codes

Question 22

criminal liability

Answer 22

conduct that unjustifiably and inexcusably inflicts or threatens substantial harm to individual or public interests

Question 23

administrative crimes

Answer 23

violations of federal and state agency rules that make up a controversial but rapidly growing source of criminal law

Question 24

Federal system

Answer 24

52 criminal codes, one for each of the 50 states, one for the District of Columbia, and one for the U.S. criminal code

Question 25

punishment

Answer 25

intentionally inflicting pain or other unpleasant consequences on another person

Question 26

criminal punishment

Answer 26

penalties that meet four criteria:

(1) inflict pain or other unpleasant consequences
(2) prescribe a punishment in the same law that defines the crime
(3) administered intentionally
(4) administered by the state

Question 27

theories of criminal punishment

Answer 27

ways of thinking about the purposes of criminal punishment

Question 28

retributionists

Answer 28

inflicting on offenders physical and psychological pain (“hard treatment”) so that they can pay for their crimes

Question 29

preventionists

Answer 29

punishment is only a means to a greater good, usually the prevention or at least the reduction of future crime (also called consequentialists)

Question 30

culpability

Answer 30

only someone who intends to harm their victim deserves punishment; accidents don’t qualify

Question 31

justice

Answer 31

depends on culpability; only those who deserve punishment ought to receive it

Question 32

deterrence

Answer 32

the use of punishment to prevent or reduce future crimes

Question 33

specific deterrence

Answer 33

aims to reduce crime by inflicting the actual punishment to convince offenders not to commit crimes in the future

Question 34

general deterrence

Answer 34

aims to reduce crime by the threat of punishment to convince criminal wannabees in the general population not to commit a crime in the future

Question 35

incapacitation

Answer 35

prevents convicted criminals from committing future crimes by locking them up, or more rarely, by altering them surgically or executing them

Question 36

rehabilitation

Answer 36

aims to prevent future crimes by changing individual offenders so that they want to play by the rules and won’t commit any more crimes in the future

Question 37

hedonism

Answer 37

the natural law that human beings seek pleasure and avoid pain

Question 38

rationalism

Answer 38

the natural law that individuals can act to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, permitting human beings to apply natural laws mechanistically (according to rules) instead of having to rely on the discretionary judgment of individual decision makers

Question 39

classical deterrence theory

Answer 39

rational human beings won’t commit crimes if they know that the pain of punishment outweighs the pleasure gained from committing crimes

Question 40

principle of utility

Answer 40

permits only the minimum amount of pain necessary to prevent the crime

Question 41

“medical model” of criminal law

Answer 41

crime is a “disease”, and criminals are “sick” in need of “treatment” and “cure”

Question 42

“not guilty” verdict

Answer 42

doesn’t mean “innocent”; it means that the government didn’t prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt

Question 43

“guilty” verdict

Answer 43

legally, not necessarily factually, guilty; it means the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt

Question 44

trial courts

Answer 44

where the cases for the state and the defense are presented; their witnesses and the physical evidence are introduced; and the fact finders (juries in jury trials or judges in nonjury bench trials) decide what the “true” story is and whether the evidence all adds up to proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt

Question 45

appellate courts

Answer 45

in most states and the federal government, the two levels of appeals courts: an intermediate court of appeals and a supreme court

Question 46

the court’s judgement

Answer 46

the court’s judgement (sometimes called the court’s decision) is how the court disposes of the case

Question 47

the court’s opinion

Answer 47

“the point of the story”; the court backs up its judgement by explaining how and why it applied the law (general principles and the elements of crimes) to the facts of the case

Question 48

Court’s Holding

Answer 48

the legal rule the court has decided to apply to the facts of the cases

Question 49

Court’s Reasoning

Answer 49

the reasons the court gives to support its holding

Question 50

majority opinion

Answer 50

the law of the case; the opinion of the majority of justices on the court who participated in the case

Question 51

concurring opinion

Answer 51

agrees with the conclusions of wither the majority or the dissenting opinion but provides different reasons for reaching the conclusion

Question 52

plurality opinion

Answer 52

an opinion that represents the reasoning of the greatest number (but less than a majority) of justices

Question 53

case citation

Answer 53

members, letters, and punctuation that tell you where to locate the full case report