mens rea

One thing about the administrative state in North Carolina is that it carries on regardless of the party in power. Here’s a graph of the annual page counts in the…

Republicans made many changes when they came into the majority of the General Assembly, but one of their most important is one of the least known. That is their dedication…

Recently, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo accidentally self-reported a serious federal violation. He could face a $100,000 fine. See if you can spot it here: “One of the highlight…

In a previous Legal Update and in a post at the Locker Room blog, I provided a number reasons for thinking Neil Gorsuch will be a worthy successor…

For centuries, it was a universally accepted principle of Anglo-American law that a criminal conviction requires proof, not only of a wrongful act—which lawyers call the “actus reus”—but also…

In Parts One and Two of this series, I bemoaned the erosion of what was once a fundamental principle of Anglo-American, namely, that:  A criminal conviction requires proof,…

In a previous Legal Update, I complained about how President Obama’s opposition to mens rea reform led him to oppose, and ultimately scuttle, other important criminal justice reforms at…

Last week, the Harvard Law Review published an article by Barack Obama entitled, “The President’s Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform.” Despite its title, the article is not an…