John H. Robinson

Unraveling the Codes: The Dialectic Between Knowledge of the Moral Person and Knowledge of the Genetic Person in Criminal Law

The criminal code is both enduring and fragile. The reasons it is bound to endure, in some form, are obvious. We cannot hope to conduct our lives in community without some minimal assurance of safety and public order. We are, unavoidably, social beings, and our lives in community require that we protect ourselves against unwarranted force, unjustified deception, and all the other ways in which harm can be done to our basic interests. Whatever else we might say about the criminal code, we surely would agree that it was invented and sustained to serve this core purpose. It is no wonder that it endures.