Week 1 Criminal Law Definitions and Key Concepts

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key definitions, theories of punishment, constitutional constraints, and case law from the Week 1 Async criminal law transcript.

Physical consequences of victimization

Effects experienced during victimization (such as fight-or-flight reactions, hyperventilation, and increased heart rate) and afterward (such as insomnia, lethargy, muscle tension, and appetite disturbance).

Emotional and psychological consequences of victimization

Psychological effects that may progress through an initial reaction, disorganization, and eventually reconstruction or acceptance, sometimes resulting in long-lasting PTSD.

Social consequences of victimization

The impact of crime on a victim's relationships with family and friends, which can lead to strained relationships, distancing, and victim blaming.

Financial consequences of victimization

Economic losses caused by crime, including property loss or repair, security measures, healthcare or counseling, criminal process participation, lost employment, and funeral expenses.

Secondary victimization

Additional victimization caused not by the criminal act itself, but by how individuals or institutions (such as police, prosecutors, judges, attorneys, or family) respond to the crime.

Restorative justice

An approach that brings defendants, victims, affected families, and communities together in an effort to heal relationships and repair the harm caused by crime.

Three components of a crime

1) A person causes a prohibited social harm, 2) the social harm results from morally blameworthy behavior, and 3) the defendant is morally condemned by the community.

Moral condemnation

Society's judgment that a defendant's behavior deserves moral condemnation, which serves as the key distinction between a crime and a tort.

Constitution (as a source of criminal law)

A primary source governing criminal procedure that can occasionally define substantive crimes, such as treason.

Statutory or regulatory law

Criminal law enacted by legislatures or administrative agencies exercising delegated legislative authority, which constitutes most modern criminal law.

Model Penal Code (MPC)

A code created in the 1960s by the American Law Institute (lawyers, judges, and scholars) to establish a more common set of criminal-law rules across states.

Common law

Judge-made law that remains important for interpreting statutes that codified common-law crimes.

Principle of legality

The rule that there is no crime without law and no punishment without law, meaning conduct cannot be punished unless it was defined as criminal before the person acted.

Rule of specificity

The requirement that criminal laws be understandable to the general public to give guidance on prohibited conduct and limit police and prosecutorial discretion.

Rule of lenity

A rule of last resort stating that when a criminal statute remains unresolvably ambiguous after all tools of statutory construction are used, it is construed in favor of the defendant.

Bill of attainder

A legislative enactment that specifically targets a person or group for criminal consequences or special criminal treatment.

United States v. Brown

A federal case where the Supreme Court struck down a law prohibiting Communist Party members from holding labor union positions as an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Ex post facto prohibition

A constitutional prohibition against retroactive criminalization and procedural changes that retroactively expose someone to criminal liability.

Stogner v. California

A Supreme Court case holding that California's attempt to revive expired statutes of limitations for child-sex-abuse prosecutions violated the Ex Post Facto Clause.

Due Process

Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections safeguarding procedural rights and substantive interests in life, liberty, and property.

Lawrence v. Texas

A Supreme Court case illustrating substantive due process limitations on the government's ability to criminalize private intimate conduct between consenting adults.

Equal Protection

A constitutional principle preventing the government from using substantive criminal laws to discriminate impermissibly, including on the basis of race.

Loving v. Virginia

A Supreme Court case that struck down a law criminalizing interracial marriage under the Equal Protection Clause.

Robinson v. California

A Supreme Court case holding under the Eighth Amendment that states cannot criminalize the status of being addicted to narcotics because liability must be based on conduct.

Punishment

A negative consequence imposed specifically for punitive or criminal-law purposes.

Retribution

A backward-looking theory of punishment that seeks to punish a person because they deserve punishment for past wrongful conduct.

Utilitarianism

A forward-looking philosophy holding that punishment is imposed to accomplish a future benefit, encompasssing rehabilitation, incapacitation, and deterrence.

Rehabilitation

A forward-looking theory seeking to reform or correct the defendant so they will not engage in future criminal behavior, based on correcting character defects.

Incapacitation

A forward-looking rationale seeking to prevent future crime by restricting a defendant's ability to commit crimes, typically through imprisonment.

Specific deterrence

Punishing a specific defendant so that the painful consequences discourage that particular defendant from committing another crime.

General deterrence

Punishing a defendant so that other people in society see the consequences and are discouraged from committing crimes.

Likelihood of apprehension

The certainty of getting caught, which data demonstrates produces a greater deterrent effect than increasing the severity of punishment.

Brutalization effect

A phenomenon where punishment intended to discourage harmful behavior counterintuitively models or validates that behavior, potentially encouraging it.

Historical or static approach (Eighth Amendment)

An approach holding that punishments rejected at the time of the Founding are prohibited under the Eighth Amendment today.

Evolving standards of decency

A dynamic Eighth Amendment approach evaluated by historical practice, current societal consensus, and the Court's independent judgment to determine if a punishment has become unconstitutional.

Trop v. Dulles

A Supreme Court case holding that stripping someone of citizenship as criminal punishment was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment.

Pragmatic constraints on punishment

Practical limitations on punishment resulting from limited government resources and necessary budgetary tradeoffs with other societal needs.

Graduated punishment

Imposing different levels of punishment based on offense severity to provide incentives for offenders to choose less harmful conduct.

Proportionality (Eighth Amendment)

The constitutional requirement that punishment bear an appropriate relationship to crime seriousness, prohibiting excessive and disproportionate punishments.

Two primary purposes of the rule of specificity

1) Providing guidance to the general public regarding prohibited conduct, and 2) limiting police and prosecutorial discretion to reduce arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement.

Clinical vs. actuarial models of future dangerousness

Clinical models rely on individual evaluations by professionals such as psychologists or psychiatrists, whereas actuarial models rely on data-based statistical predictions.

Theoretical dilemma of general deterrence at its margins

At extreme margins, general deterrence could theoretically justify punishing an innocent person if doing so deters others, which directly conflicts with fundamental criminal justice principles.

Common forms of criminal punishment

Monetary fines or restitution, imprisonment or hard labor, community service, and shaming punishments.

Three evaluation criteria for evolving standards of decency

1) Historical practice, 2) current societal consensus, and 3) the Supreme Court's independent judgment.

Excessiveness vs. proportionality under the Eighth Amendment

Excessiveness prohibits punishment that bears no relationship to the legitimate purposes of punishment, whereas proportionality prohibits punishment that is grossly disproportionate to the crime.