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Archive for October, 2014|Monthly archive page

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Causation and Criminal Law

In America, Criminal Law, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Philosophy on October 29, 2014 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

Actus reus, which is shorthand for the opening words in the Latin phrase actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea (“an act does not make a person guilty unless his mind is also guilty”), is one element of a crime that a prosecutor must prove to establish criminal liability. A prosecutor must prove, in particular, that the defendant’s actus reus caused the harmful result at issue in the case. To do so, the prosecutor must show not only that the act was the “actual cause” of the harm (i.e., the “factual cause” or the “but for” cause”) but also that the act was the “proximate cause” of the harm (i.e., the “legal cause”).

The so-called “but for” test, also known as the sine qua non test, seeks to determine whether a particular act brought about the particular harm to the alleged victim. If the question whether the harm would not have happened but for the defendant’s action is answered in the affirmative, then causation is established; accordingly, if the harm would have happened notwithstanding the defendant’s act, then the defendant’s act is not a “cause in fact.” The “but for” test is not satisfied unless the prosecutor can show that the harm was foreseeable; if the harm was not foreseeable, then the defendant cannot be said to be the actual cause of the harm, only the proximate cause of the harm.

Determining causation is difficult when two people are performing different acts at different times, and each of their acts could have caused the harm at the time the harm occurred. The two acts by the two different people constitute concurrent sufficient causes under the “but for” test. Because there are two different people who could have “caused” the harm according to the “but for” test, yet only one of the two people actually caused the harm, the “but for” test fails to establish causation.

There are two tests that courts may apply when there are multiple sufficient causes under the facts. The first is the substantial factor test, according to which a defendant is criminally liable if his acts are shown to be a substantial factor leading to the harm to the alleged victim. This test is not commonly used because it can be arbitrary and subjective. The better test is a modified form of the “but for” test, formulated this way: “But for the defendant’s voluntary act, the harm would not have occurred not just when it did, but as it did.” Even this revised test falls short of ideal. For instance, it is not clear how this test is applied when two non-lethal acts combine to cause the death of one victim.

Regardless of which tests for causation obtain or prevail in a particular case, a prosecutor must establish each element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard, at least, is a legal certainty.

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Free Not to Vote

In America, Arts & Letters, Austrian Economics, Libertarianism, News and Current Events, Politics on October 22, 2014 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

This piece first appeared here as a Mises Emerging Scholar article for the Ludwig von Mises Institute Canada.

The 2014 U.S. midterm elections are coming up, and I don’t intend to vote. A vote is like virginity: you don’t give it away to the first flower-bearing suitor. I haven’t been given a good reason, let alone flowers, to vote for any candidate, so I will stay home, as well I should.

This month, my wife, a Brazilian citizen, drove from Auburn, Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia, on a Sunday morning to cast her vote for the presidential election in Brazil. She arrived at the Brazilian consulate and waited in a long line of expatriates only to be faced with a cruel choice: vote for the incumbent socialist Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party, for the socialist Aécio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party who is billed as a center-right politician, for the environmentalist socialist Marina Silva of the Socialist Party, or for any of the other socialist candidates who were polling so low that they had no chance of victory. Brazil maintains a system of compulsory voting in addition to other compulsory schemes such as conscription for all males aged 18.

Logan Albright recently wrote about the folly of compulsory voting, support for which is apparently growing in Canada. He criticized the hypocrisy of an allegedly democratic society mandating a vote and then fining or jailing those who do not follow the mandate. He also pointed out the dangers of forcing uneducated and uninformed citizens to vote against their will. This problem is particularly revealing in Brazil, where illiterate candidates have exploited election laws to run absurd commercials and to assume the persona of silly characters such as a clown, Wonder Woman, Rambo, Crazy Dick, and Hamburger Face, each of which is worth googling for a chuckle. The incumbent clown, by the way, was just reelected on the campaign slogan “it can’t get any worse.” Multiple Barack Obamas and Osama bin Ladens were also running for office, as was, apparently, Jesus. The ballot in Brazil has become goofier than a middle-school election for class president.

Even in the United States, as the election of Barack Obama demonstrates, voting has become more about identity politics, fads, and personalities than about principle or platform. Just over a decade ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the Governor of California amid a field of second-rate celebrities while a former professional wrestler (the fake and not the Olympian kind of wrestling) Jesse “the Body” Ventura was winding up his term as the Governor of Minnesota. Today comedian Al Franken holds a seat in the United States Senate. It turns out that Brazil isn’t the only country that can boast having a clown in office.

No serious thinker believes that a Republican or Democratic politician has what it takes to boost the economy, facilitate peace, or generate liberty. The very function of a career politician is antithetical to market freedom; no foolish professional vote-getter ought to have the power he or she enjoys under the current managerial state system, but voting legitimates that power.

It is often said, “If you don’t vote, you can’t complain.” The counterpoint is that voting ensures your complicity with the policies that elected politicians will enact. If you don’t vote, you lack complicity. You are not morally blameworthy for resisting the system that infringes basic rights or that offends your sense of justice and reason. You have not bestowed credibility on the government with your formal participation in its most sacred ritual. The higher the number of voters who participate in an election, the more legitimacy there is for the favored projects of the elected politicians, and the more likely those politicians are to impose their will on the populace by way of legislation or other legal means.

Refusing to vote can send a message: get your act together or we won’t turn out at the polling stations. Low voter turnout undermines the validity of the entire political system. Abstention also demonstrates your power: just watch how the politicians grovel and scramble for your vote, promise you more than they can deliver, beg for your support. This is how it ought to be: Politicians need to work for your vote and to earn it. They need to prove that they are who they purport to be and that they stand for that which they purport to stand. If they can’t do this, they don’t deserve your vote.

Abstention is not apathy; it is the exercise of free expression, a voluntary act of legitimate and peaceful defiance, the realization of a right.

There are reasonable alternatives to absolute abstention: one is to vote for the rare candidate who does, in fact, seek out liberty, true liberty; another is to cast a protest vote for a candidate outside the mainstream. Regardless, your vote is a representation of your person, the indicia of your moral and ethical beliefs. It should not be dispensed with lightly.

If you have the freedom not to vote, congratulations: you still live in a society with a modicum of liberty. Your decision to exercise your liberty is yours alone. Choose wisely.

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Red Birds at Law Building, A Poem by Jason Morgan

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on October 15, 2014 at 8:45 am

Jason Morgan is a New Orleans native and grew up mostly in Louisiana and Tennessee. He attended the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga (BA, History and International Studies) and the University of Hawai’i-Manoa (MA, Asian Studies: China focus), and is now ABD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Japanese history). He has attended or conducted research at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, Nagoya University, Yunnan University in Kunming, PRC, and the University of Texas-San Antonio. He’s currently on a Fulbright grant researching Japanese legal history at Waseda University in Tokyo. His topics include case law during the Taishou Period, and the broad contexualization of the Tokyo War Crimes Trial.  His scholarly work has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in Modern Age (on American labor history), Japan Review (two reviews of Japanese history monographs), Education About Asia (two reviews of Japanese history textbooks), Human Life Review (on Griswold v. Connecticut; review of book on Catholics and abortion), Metamorphoses (translation of Tanizaki Jun’ichirou’s Randa no Setsu), Southeast Review of Asian Studies (on Japanese translation work), and in book form (two translations of Mizoguchi Yuuzou on Chinese intellectual history; translation of Ono Keishi on Japanese military financing in WWI and during the Siberian Intervention). He has also written for the College Fix and College Insurrection.

Red Birds at Law Building

It is astonishing that we
live in the same world, yet in two
I see the same things that they see,
do (almost) everything they do

but they sit on a sill and sing
outside today’s exam in law:
these are two very different things,
two very different kinds of awe

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The Felony-Murder Rule: Background and Justification

In American History, Britain, Criminal Law, History, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Philosophy on October 8, 2014 at 8:45 am

Allen 2

The rule at common law as incorporated into the legal system of the early United States was that a person is guilty of murder (and not some lesser offense of killing) if he killed another person during the commission or attempted commission of any felony. This rule is known as the “felony-murder rule.” It was abolished in England in the mid-20th century and never existed in such continental nations as France or Germany. The rule became common, however, in various jurisdictions throughout the United States, although it never escaped criticism.

Felony murder is bifurcated into first-degree and second-degree murder: the former arises when the killing of another results from the commission of an enumerated felony; the latter arises when the killing of another results from the commission of an unspecified felony. The felony-murder rule negates any investigation into the objective intent of the offender; it obtains regardless of whether the offender killed his victim intentionally, recklessly, accidentally, or unforeseeably. Although it dispenses with the element of malice that is requisite to a finding of murder, the felony-murder rule retains by implication the concept of malice insofar as the intent to commit a felony is, under the rule, constitutive of malice for murder. The rule, in essence, conflates the intent to commit one wrong with the intent to commit another wrong, namely, the termination of another’s life. The intent to do a felonious wrong is, on this understanding, sufficiently serious to bypass any consideration of the nature of the exact wrong that was contemplated.

The most common justification for the felony-murder rule is that it deters dangerous felonious behavior and decreases the chance that an innocent bystander will suffer bodily harm from a high-risk felony. The possibility of a more severe conviction and sentence, according to this theory, reduces the number of negligent and accidental killings that might have taken place during the commission of a felony. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., supported the felony-murder rule, believing as he did that a felonious offender who kills another person during the commission of any felony ought to be punished as a murderer, even if the killing was not foreseeable based on the circumstances of the felony. Critics of the deterrence justification for the felony-murder rule have argued that no rule can deter an unintended act.

Another justification for the felony-murder rule is that it affirms the sanctity and dignity of human life. This justification answers in the affirmative the question whether a felony resulting in death is more serious than a felony not resulting in death. Because a felony resulting in death is, in fact, more serious, according to this logic, a felony murderer owes a greater debt to society and must accordingly suffer a more extreme punishment. Critics of this view argue that the culpability for the two separate harms—the felony and the killing—must remain separate and be analyzed independently of each other. These critics suggest that the felony-murder rule runs up against constitutional principles regarding proportional punishment (i.e., whether the punishment “fits” the crime) and that there is no justice or fairness in punishing a felon for a harm (death) that was unintended.

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Paul H. Fry on Deconstruction, Part I

In American Literature, Arts & Letters, Books, History, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Pedagogy, Philosophy, Postmodernism, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Scholarship, Teaching, Western Philosophy, Writing on October 1, 2014 at 8:45 am

Below is the eighth installment in the lecture series on literary theory and criticism by Paul H. Fry.  The three two lectures are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.