May 18, 2010 2:34PM # Without Intent By [David Rittgers](https://www.cato.org/people/david-rittgers) --- SHARE One of the major problems with the growing body of federal crimes – over 4,500 and counting, expanding at the rate of 500 each decade – is that many lack the traditional requirement that the defendant has acted with a guilty mind, or *mens rea*. Highlighting the overcriminalization of nearly everything is necessary to educate the citizenry and put pressure on politicians not to pass overbroad and ill-defined criminal offenses. At some point, however, Congress must act to address the existing flawed statutes and put procedural barriers between bad ideas and the federal criminal code. Enter the [Heritage Foundation](http://www.heritage.org/) and the [National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers](http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/freeform/publicwelcome?opendocument) with their groundbreaking report, *[Without Intent: How Congress is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law](http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/05/Without-Intent)*. The report studies the legislation proposed or passed by the 109th Congress (2005–2006) and finds that a majority lacked an adequate *mens rea* requirement. The report closes with a strong case for several fundamental changes in the way that Congress creates criminal laws: - Enact default rules of interpretation ensuring that guilty-mind requirements are adequate to protect against unjust conviction. - Codify the rule of lenity, which grants defendants the benefit of the doubt when Congress fails to legislate clearly. - Require adequate judiciary committee oversight of every bill proposing criminal offenses or penalties. - Provide detailed written justification for and analysis of all new federal criminalization. - Redouble efforts to draft every federal criminal offense clearly and precisely. This report is indicative of a broad effort developing across the political spectrum to fix a federal criminal code that has become disconnected from traditional notions of punishing blameworthy conduct. Northwestern Law’s Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth held its 2009 Judicial Symposium on [Criminalization of Corporate Conduct](http://www.law.northwestern.edu/searlecenter/issues/index.cfm?ID=91). The Heritage Foundation is hosting an [event](http://www.heritage.org/Events/2010/05/Without-Intent) highlighting the findings of *Without Intent* on Monday, May 24 that can also be viewed online. ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).