Symposium: Twenty-Five Years of George Fletcher's Rethinking Criminal Law

Abstract:     
Tulsa Law Review is proud to have dedicated its Summer 2004 issue to a symposium honoring Professor George P. Fletcher's Rethinking Criminal Law ("Rethinking"). Since its publication over twenty-five years ago, Rethinking has become a well known time-honored classic of criminal law jurisprudence and the most cited scholarly book on criminal law. This symposium honors Rethinking by recognizing its significant contribution to legal scholarship and by assessing its future influence on the evolution of the criminal law.

The contributions to this Symposium are as varied as the diverse sources and methodologies utilized in Rethinking. They address a range of criminal law issues from the perspectives of moral philosophy, political philosophy, history, international law, and comparative law. The topics addressed include the theory of crime legislation, subjective versus objective perspectives on mens rea, normative versus descriptive views of fault and culpability, the offense/defense distinction, the justification/excuse distinction, mistaken and unknowing justification, self-defense, the politics of crime legislation, the problem of moral luck, the possibility of a universal grammar or structure of criminal law, and universal jurisdiction in international criminal law. As befitting the interdisciplinary approach of Rethinking, the contributors are from the varied fields of philosophy, jurisprudence, legal history, and, of course, criminal law. And as befitting Rethinking as perhaps the first book on comparative criminal law, nearly half of the contributions are from leading scholars from abroad - England, Scotland, Argentina, Israel, Spain, and Germany.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 18

JEL Classification: K14

Accepted Paper Series