Abstract: The last thirty years have seen an explosion of neuroscience research on how the mind functions. This research paints a revised image of what constitutes human nature and behavior and how the criminal law can handle those extremes of it that endanger individuals and their society. The revision is important to the criminal law because key criminal law concepts of culpability depend on the internal workings of individuals’ minds. Research into intentionality, consciousness, and brain plasticity are just some examples of areas where new discoveries could help enhance validity and reliability within the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, lawyers have increasingly introduced neuroscience evidence into the courtroom, a trend suggesting that the complexity of the legal issues raised will only expand as the science progresses. On a more fundamental level, neuroscience is also an excellent resource to revitalize the Model Penal Code’s original focus on subjective determinations of an individual defendant’s blameworthiness, based on that particular defendant’s mental state. Over the last sixty years, the American criminal justice system has become far more punitive, and the subjective inquiry has been overshadowed by a more objective standard that downplays the need to assess individual culpability. The incorporation of modern neuroscience research into the criminal law would bring back a system of justice that more accurately reflects a given defendant’s mental state as well more effectively protects the rest of society. But to benefit from neuroscience in this way, we must first penetrate the mystique that often surrounds the meaning and applicability of the science. We must move on from misconceptions, fears, and misguided debates. And we must realize that although neuroscience brings unique insight to the law, there is nothing about neuroscience that merits unique treatment by the law.

Abstract: This essay undertakes two tasks: first, to describe the differing mens rea requirements for accomplice liability of both Anglo-American common law and the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code; and second, to recommend how the mens rea requirements of both of these two sources of criminal law in America should be amended so as to satisfy the goals of clarity and consistency and so as to more closely conform the criminal law to the requirements of moral blameworthiness. Three "pure models" of the mens rea requirements for complicity are distinguished, based on the three theories of liability conventionally distinguished in the general part of Anglo-American criminal law. One of these, the vicarious responsibility model, is put aside initially because of both its descriptive inaccuracy and its normative undesirability. The analysis proceeds using the other two models: that of the mens rea requirements for principal liability for completed crimes, and that of the mens rea requirements for attempt liability. Both the common law and the Model Penal Code are seen as complicated admixtures of these two models, the common law being too narrow in the scope of its threatened liability and the Model Penal Code being both too broad and too opaque in its demands for accomplice liability. The normative recommendation of the paper is to adopt the model for the mens rea of complicity that treats it as a form of principal liability, recognizing that the overbreadth of liability resulting from adoption of that model would have to be redressed by adopting a "shopkeeper's privilege" as an affirmative defense separate from any mens rea requirement.

Abstract: The Silicon Valley Ellen Pao trial brought to the forefront once again the changing nature of discrimination in the workplace with its focus on a culture of bias and the prevalence of unconscious discriminatory behavior. This case is only the most recent high-profile example. There is an emerging consensus among scholars that the concept of “intent” in disparate treatment employment discrimination should be broadened to encapsulate more flexible notions including implicit bias, negligent discrimination, and structural discrimination. These scholars argue convincingly that psychological research demonstrates that implicit bias and reliance on ingrained stereotypes is, to some extent, natural to human decision-making processes. As a result, bias in the workplace operates at both an overt, knowing level but also beneath the surface and, at times, without the conscious knowledge of the decision-makers themselves.However, despite extensive discussion of implicit bias in the legal literature, few, if any, scholars have considered alterations to liability and compensation schemes as a result of the broader meanings of intent. This article proposes looking to criminal law as a practical and theoretical model for an amendment to Title VII that would include gradations of intent with concomitant gradations in liability. The Model Penal Code presents an orderly and well-thought-out approach to intent, or mens rea, and the gradations of intent that support a finding of guilt. In addition, theory and policy supporting criminal law’s linkage of intent and liability are remarkably analogous to Title VII’s goal of elimination of discrimination. As a result, this article contends that a careful and measured consideration of criminal law’s approach to liability is instructive.Drawing on the extensive literature on flexible intent and criminal law theories of retributivism and consequentialism, this article proposes a statutory expansion of the definition of disparate treatment discrimination under Title VII with an adjustment in the liability regime based on the level of employer intent. We contend that a clear link between intent level and damages constitutes an attractive balancing of employer and employee needs that should spur this crucial statutory change. A statutory amendment to Title VII that both broadens the meaning of “intent” for disparate treatment claims but also limits liability based on the level of intent offers a compromise position that expands the application of discrimination law to meet changing workplace norms and a theoretically and emotionally satisfying means of accomplishing that change.

Abstract: This paper, a version of which was presented at the Browning Symposium at the University of Montana School of Law, addresses the important question of how the law should treat a voluntarily intoxicated person's assent to sexual contact. Many jurisdictions, as well as the Model Penal Code, do not consider voluntary intoxication as vitiating consent, notwithstanding that such intoxicated choices might sometimes be inauthentic. While acknowledging the positive autonomy interests in recognizing many instances of intoxicated consent, the paper argues that certain cases of extreme intoxication deserve different treatment. It also explains how these cases can be addressed, at least in part, without embracing objectionably vague liability standards. It canvasses and critiques the various approaches to this problem that have been suggested in the American Law Institute's draft revisions of the Model Penal Code sexual assault provisions. The paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts about the relationship between just criminal law and campus sexual assault regulation.

Abstract: There is in the criminal law perhaps no principle more canonical than the fault principle, which holds that one may be punished only where one is blameworthy, and one is blameworthy only where one is at fault. Courts, criminal law scholars, moral philosophers and textbook authors all take the fault principle to be the foundational requirement for a just criminal law. Indeed, perceived threats to the fault principle in the mid-Twentieth Century yielded no less an achievement than the drafting of the Model Penal Code, which had as its guiding purpose an effort to safeguard faultless conduct from criminal condemnation.Yet notwithstanding its pedigree and predominance, I believe that the fault principle is false: Fault is not in fact necessary for one to deserve blame and punishment. Instead, and as made plain by the broader account of guilt I shall articulate here, one can be blameworthy, and so deserve punishment, even if one committed no element of the crime, and merely because one bears a particular kind of relationship to the criminal. Just when and why relationships, rather than fault, ought to ground criminal liability is what I seek to elucidate here. To that end, the Article first interrogates the (very few) arguments made on behalf of the fault principle and finds these wanting. The Article then presents cases and examples that illustrate how it is that one could be blameworthy even though one is not at fault. Finally, the Article considers the criminal law implications for individuals who are blameworthy without fault, and it concludes that at least some of these individuals deserve prosecution and punishment.This conclusion should not only shift our thinking about the conceptual relationships between blame, fault, guilt, culpability and criminal liability. It should also awaken us to salutary practical possibilities. For the Article’s account, we shall see, ultimately provides a way to prosecute individuals who are widely regarded as deserving criminal punishment (e.g., executives at banks responsible for the financial crisis) but whom the fault principle currently places outside of the criminal law’s reach.

Abstract: The Silicon Valley Ellen Pao trial brought to the forefront once again the changing nature of discrimination in the workplace with its focus on a culture of bias and the prevalence of unconscious discriminatory behavior. This case is only the most recent high-profile example. There is an emerging consensus among scholars that the concept of “intent” in disparate treatment employment discrimination should be broadened to encapsulate more flexible notions including implicit bias, negligent discrimination, and structural discrimination. These scholars argue convincingly that psychological research demonstrates that implicit bias and reliance on ingrained stereotypes is, to some extent, natural to human decision-making processes. As a result, bias in the workplace operates at both an overt, knowing level but also beneath the surface and, at times, without the conscious knowledge of the decision-makers themselves.However, despite extensive discussion of implicit bias in the legal literature, few, if any, scholars have considered alterations to liability and compensation schemes as a result of the broader meanings of intent. This article proposes looking to criminal law as a practical and theoretical model for an amendment to Title VII that would include gradations of intent with concomitant gradations in liability. The Model Penal Code presents an orderly and well-thought-out approach to intent, or mens rea, and the gradations of intent that support a finding of guilt. In addition, theory and policy supporting criminal law’s linkage of intent and liability are remarkably analogous to Title VII’s goal of elimination of discrimination. As a result, this article contends that a careful and measured consideration of criminal law’s approach to liability is instructive.Drawing on the extensive literature on flexible intent and criminal law theories of retributivism and consequentialism, this article proposes a statutory expansion of the definition of disparate treatment discrimination under Title VII with an adjustment in the liability regime based on the level of employer intent. We contend that a clear link between intent level and damages constitutes an attractive balancing of employer and employee needs that should spur this crucial statutory change. A statutory amendment to Title VII that both broadens the meaning of “intent” for disparate treatment claims but also limits liability based on the level of intent offers a compromise position that expands the application of discrimination law to meet changing workplace norms and a theoretically and emotionally satisfying means of accomplishing that change.

Abstract: Bankruptcy law has fiercely competing policies. A primary one is the debtor's fresh start. Another is that discharge of debt is a selectively conferred privilege rather than an unlimited right. This latter policy is manifested in part by the Bankruptcy Code's exceptions to discharge. One exception involves a debt for defalcation while acting in a fiduciary capacity. In 2013, the Supreme Court addressed the meaning of the term "defalcation" and established a new, heightened mental standard based on the Model Penal Code's definition of recklessly. The meaning of the term "fiduciary capacity" is not clear. This Article makes three contributions. First, it compiles and evaluates the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on the meaning of fiduciary capacity in the bankruptcy setting. The most recent opinion on that term was issued in 1934 and provided limited guidance that was obscure and primarily in a negative form. Since the time of that decision, circuit and bankruptcy courts throughout the country have struggled to apply a consistent framework for determining whether modern legal relationships amount to a fiduciary capacity. The second contribution is the categorization of the circuit split into four separate approaches. The final contribution is an assessment of the adequacy of the current judicial approaches and the proposal of a new framework for determining if a relationship is a fiduciary capacity for purposes of the exception to discharge. This is done by exploring the methods used to identify a fiduciary relationship under non-bankruptcy law, examining the problems with using those methods in a bankruptcy context, and suggesting the Supreme Court's 2013 opinion on defalcation justifies a rebalancing of the judicial construction of the statutory terms "defalcation" and "fiduciary capacity."