Purposes of Punishment and Legality: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
25 flashcard terms for Criminal Law Topic 1, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 15-question quiz — free, no account needed.
A backward-looking justification for punishment holding that a blameworthy offender deserves to suffer in proportion to the wrong committed, independent of any future social benefit the sanction might produce.
Utilitarian punishment theory
A forward-looking justification asking whether the pain imposed by punishment is outweighed by future crime prevented through deterrence, incapacitation, or reform of the offender.
General deterrence
Punishing one offender in order to discourage the wider public from committing similar crimes; it treats the defendant partly as a means of sending a message to others.
Specific deterrence
Punishing an offender so that this particular person is discouraged from reoffending, either by fear of repeated sanction or by the unpleasantness of the experience itself.
Incapacitation
Restraining an offender, usually through imprisonment, so that during the period of confinement the person is physically unable to commit further crimes against the public.
Rehabilitation
A utilitarian aim of using the criminal sanction to change the offender through treatment, education, or training so that the person chooses not to offend after release.
Expressive theory of punishment
The view that criminal conviction communicates public condemnation of the act and reaffirms shared norms, so the sanction carries a moral message beyond deterrence or restraint.
Principle of legality
The requirement that conduct be defined as criminal by law before it is committed, captured in the maxim that there is no crime and no punishment without law.
Void for vagueness doctrine
A due process rule invalidating a criminal statute that fails to give ordinary people fair notice of what is forbidden or that invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement by police.
Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville
The Supreme Court struck down a vagrancy ordinance sweeping in loafing and wandering because it gave no notice and handed police unfettered discretion to arrest disfavored people.
City of Chicago v. Morales
A gang loitering ordinance was held unconstitutionally vague because remaining in one place with no apparent purpose gave neither notice to citizens nor limits on officer discretion.
Keeler v. Superior Court
California held that a fetus was not a human being within the murder statute, so extending the statute judicially would violate notice and the separation of powers.
Rule of lenity
When a criminal statute remains genuinely ambiguous after ordinary tools of interpretation, the court resolves the doubt in favor of the defendant rather than expanding liability.
Ex post facto clause
A constitutional bar on legislation that criminalizes conduct after it occurred, increases the punishment for a past act, or reduces the evidence needed to convict for it.
Common law crime abolition
Most American jurisdictions and the Model Penal Code bar courts from creating new offenses, requiring that every crime be defined by statute enacted in advance.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt
The constitutional standard, confirmed in In re Winship, requiring the prosecution to prove every element of the charged offense to a near certainty before a conviction may stand.
In re Winship
The Supreme Court held that due process demands proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged, including in juvenile proceedings.
Jury nullification
The power of a jury to acquit against the evidence because it rejects the law or its application; the power exists in practice but defendants have no right to an instruction on it.
Presumption of innocence
The rule that a defendant enters trial with no burden to prove anything and may be convicted only if the state carries its own burden on every element.
Regina v. Dudley and Stephens
The shipwrecked sailors who killed and ate the cabin boy were convicted of murder, the court refusing to recognize necessity as a defense to intentional killing of an innocent.
Proportionality in sentencing
The principle that the severity of punishment should correspond to the gravity of the offense and the culpability of the offender, policed loosely under the Eighth Amendment.
Ewing v. California
The Court upheld a long three strikes sentence for shoplifting golf clubs, showing that noncapital proportionality review under the Eighth Amendment is highly deferential.
Malum in se
An offense regarded as wrongful in itself by widely shared moral judgment, such as murder or rape, as opposed to conduct wrong only because a legislature forbade it.
Malum prohibitum
An offense that is wrong only because it is prohibited by regulation or statute, such as licensing and traffic violations, often carrying reduced fault requirements.
Model Penal Code grading structure
The Code sorts offenses into felonies of the first, second, and third degree, misdemeanors, petty misdemeanors, and violations, with violations carrying no imprisonment.