Book Reviews
| Publication year | 2009 |
| Pages | 0080 |
Non-fiction and Fiction Summer Reads
In the Name of Justice: Leading Experts Reexamine the Classic Article "The Aims of the Criminal Law"
edited by Timothy Lynch, Cato Institute, 200 pages
reviewed by Stephen A. Shea
Almost 15 years have passed since authorities discovered the bloody bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, victims of violent stabbings. Well over 10 years have passed since a California jury acquitted O.J. Simpson of their double homicide. And nearly a decade has passed since a civil jury returned a verdict against Simpson in the civil wrongful death case, based on essentially the same facts.
Yet some of the issues raised by this extremely well-publicized example remain: Why are there varying aims, processes and guarantees in the criminal and civil justice systems? Does it, or should it even, say something different that O.J. Simpson was innocent in the eyes of criminal law and liable in the civil arena? Criminal and civil systems have different burdens of proof, true, and racial divisions may continue to impact individual answers to these questions, but one can still pull back only a tiny bit and see some of the questions that motivated Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute to collect the essays for this book. What exactly does it mean to say that somebody is a criminal? Why should we care?
Lynch's collection sets out to examine the gap between the civil and the criminal systems by using a classic article from the middle of the last century as its overarching focus and uniting theme. Then, more than a legal generation ago, budding lawyers fed on an intellectual diet of the likes of Professor Henry Hart. Hart, who taught at Harvard Law School, was a preeminent legal scholar of his time, and his influence lives still.
Among the mimeographed handouts that Hart chose to publish was an essay titled, The Aims of the Criminal Law.[1] This essay, first published in 1958 for distribution outside of his classes, discussed the end goals of the criminal justice system from various perspectives, including constitution makers, legislators, police, courts and prosecuting attorneys. He argues that there is one vitally important reason why we should all care about what makes the criminal justice system unique: Marking someone as a criminal is a special brand of community condemnation. Thus, society must exercise caution and sound judgment in what...
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