In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article “The Aims of the Criminal Law”

America’s criminal codes are so voluminous that they now bewilder not only the average citizen but also the average lawyer. Our courthouses are so clogged that there is no longer adequate time for trials. And our penitentiaries are overflowing with prisoners. In fact, America now has the highest per capita prison population in the world. This situation has many people wondering whether the American criminal justice system has become dysfunctional.

A generation ago Harvard Law Professor Henry Hart Jr. published his classic article, “The Aims of the Criminal Law,” which set forth certain fundamental principles concerning criminal justice. In this book, leading scholars, lawyers, and judges critically examine Hart’s ideas, current legal trends, and whether the “first principles” of American criminal law are falling by the wayside.

THE ISSUES CONSIDERED INCLUDE

• The proper role of the criminal sanction in a free society.
• Whether we can still condemn “criminals” when we have all (probably) violated a federal criminal law.
• Whether the criminal law can retain its moral role of condemnation when policymakers remove the requirement that a person must knowingly commit a crime to be convicted.
• Whether businesses can thrive in a world where routine accounting and data storage practices can arbitrarily be deemed felonies by federal prosecutors.
• Whether the government should compensate those who have been wrongfully prosecuted and incarcerated.

Policymakers, academics, and citizens alike will enjoy this lively discussion on the nature of crime and punishment, and how the choices we make in formulating criminal laws can impact liberty, security, and justice.

“This 50th anniversary reexamination of Hart’s influential theory of the criminal law should interest both practicing attorney and any layman stupefied by the changes in both law and society going on around us. While the book is worth its price just for making Hart’s long-ago memo accessible to a new generation of readers, its focus is a collection of essays. The purpose of the reconsideration acknowledges that the theoretical underpinnings of criminal law have changed so dramatically- alarmingly, even-that some notice should be taken. Read this book. Then think about it.”
—James Srodes, The American Spectator

Timothy Lynch is director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and has become a leading voice in the battle for civil liberties and the Bill of Rights. Lynch has published articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the National Law Journal, and he has appeared on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, and C‑SPAN’s Washington Journal, among other venues.

Contributors

Alan M. Dershowitz

James B. Jacobs

Judge Alex Kozinski

Justice Stephen J. Markman

Judge Richard A. Posner

Justice Richard B. Sanders

Harvey A. Silverglate

James Q. Wilson