Markus D. Dubber

Policing Possession: The War on Crime and the End of Criminal Law

The war on crime has been the dominant ideology of American criminal law for the past three decades. This paper examines the inner workings of this remarkably successful, yet still little understood, strategy of social control. Particular attention is paid to the role of victimless crimes, and possession in particular, as sweep offenses to incapacitate dangerous undesirables. Easy to detect and to prove, yet far more potent and less vulnerable to constitutional scrutiny, possession emerges as the new and improved vagrancy, a modern policing tool for a modern police regime, the war on victimless crime.

American Plea Bargains, German Lay Judges, and the Crisis of Criminal Procedure

In this paper, I propose that we reconsider the foundation of our system of punishment imposition in the context of assessing recent proposals to eradicate plea bargaining in this country by importing the juryless and judge-dominated German criminal process. Proposals to import the German process are based on an unrealistic image of the German criminal trial. I present an alternative account of the German criminal process that draws on statutory and statistical materials as well as on field research, including trial observation and interviews with German judges, prosecutors, and lay judges. More importantly, the challenge of plea bargaining in the face of a constitutional right to a jury trial merely illustrates a more fundamental challenge to analyze and legitimize the system of punishment imposition as it operates in fact. To meet this two-fold challenge, criminal procedure must shed its status as the poor relation of constitutional theory. The constitution provides neither an account nor a theory of the modern criminal process, which is dominated by informal and nonpublic agreements and no longer by formal public trials.

The Right to Be Punished: Autonomy and Its Demise in Modern Penal Thought

The Enlightenment was the age of empathy and abstract identity. The common man no longer was to be pitied for his unfortunate plight. Instead, enlightened gentlemen and reformers strove to empathize with the ordinary person—identify with him—precisely because he was identical to them in some fundamental sense. That sense differed from Enlightenment theory to theory, but the identity remained central. So Bentham insisted that every member of the utility community was like any other because every members pain and joy equally affected the utilitarian calculus and thus the common good. Contractarians like Beccaria or Fichte portrayed all citizens as identical insofar as they were all signatories to the social contract, a contract grounded in the shared rationality of its signatories who surrendered some of their external freedom to pursue their life plans protected from the chaos of the law of nature. And Kant and Hegel stressed the common capacity for rational deliberation shared by all humans as rational beings.

Positive Generalprävention und Rechtsgutstheorie: Zwei zentrale Errungenschaften der deutschen Strafrechtswissenschaft aus amerikanischer Sicht

Abstract I. Die positive Generalprävention und die Rechtsgutslehre gelten zu Recht als Eckpfeiler der deutschen Strafrechtswissenschaft. Die eine Theorie erklärt warum gestraft wird und die andere was bestraft wird. Da beide Theorien dem amerikanischen Strafrecht fremd sind, ergibt sich zwangsläufig die Frage, ob die deutsche Strafrechtswissenschaft hier nicht einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung des amerikanischen Strafrechts leisten könnte. Um dieser Frage nachzugehen, wäre es allerdings sinnvoll, diese potentiellen Exportgüter aus amerikanischer Sicht einmal unter die Lupe zu nehmen. Vielleicht könnte von dieser rechtsvergleichenden Inspektion ja letztendlich nicht nur der Importeur, sondern auch der Exporteur profitieren.

The Unprincipled Punishment of Repeat Offenders: A Critique of California's Habitual Criminal Statute

Recidivist statutes in the United States come in many shapes and sizes. Some impose short jail terms on habitual traffic offenders, while others mandate life sentences for all third felony offenders. Among the most noteworthy of modern recidivist statutes is the California Habitual Criminal Statute, §667 of the California Penal Code. Section 667 is, without a doubt, the harshest of Californias many recidivist provisions. This note presents a detailed critique of §667. It argues that §667 is inconsistent with each of the four generally accepted punishment theories: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. And, in the absence of repeal, California courts should interpret §667 as narrowly as possible. And finally, this note proffers an alternative to §667 that would attempt to limit penalty enhancements to those specific offenders who are considered exceptionally likely to commit serious crimes once released from prison, and to assign such enhancements in a fair and proportionate fashion.

Regulatory and Legal Aspects of Penality

The distinction between regulation and law is a fairly recent manifestation of a broader distinction between two modes of governance, police and law, the roots of which can be traced back to the origins of the conceptualization of governance in ancient Greece in terms of economic heteronomy within the private sphere of the household and political autonomy within the public sphere of the agora. Reframed and deepened in this way, the distinction between regulation and law can play a role in the critical analysis of the states penal power.

Lay participation in modern law: a comparative historical analysis

In recent decades, the trial jury has become one of the prime exports of American legal culture. Since the 1970s, countries as diverse as Spain, Russia, the Dominican Republic and South Korea have established criminal trial juries in one form or another. Some of these versions have been influenced not only by the American model, but also by others, such as the German Schöffengericht (mixed court). The new jury systems share a democratic rhetoric, the willingness to involve ordinary citizens in the workings of the courts to represent ‘the people’. Oddly this rise in interest in importing lay participation has coincided with a decline at its most recent point of origin, the United States. The vast majority of civil matters are resolved through settlement or arbitration; most recently, the rate of jury trials in federal civil cases in the United States stood at less than 1%. As for American criminal trials, plea bargaining has practically replaced trial by jury: only about 2% of federal criminal cases now result in a jury trial. This issue of Comparative Legal History explores the fate of lay judges historically and comparatively in different parts of the Western world. How do we define lay participation? This issue concentrates on Anglo-American juries and

Zur Geschichte und Theorie der Verbandsstrafbarkeit: Eine kritische Analyse aus rechtsvergleichender Sicht

Auf den ersten Blick erscheint es, als hätten sich das angloamerikanische und das deutsche Verbandsstrafrecht um die Wende zum 19. Jahrhundert gekreuzt wie zwei Schiffe bei Nacht: Während das angloamerikanische Recht vor 1800 keine Verbandsstrafbarkeit kannte, war dies im deutschen Recht nach 1800 der Fall. Eine historische Untersuchung ergibt allerdings, dass sie in beiden Rechtskreisen mindestens seit dem Mittelalter verbreitet war und dass weder in England vor 1800 noch in Deutschland nach 1800 vollständig auf sie verzichtet wurde. Eine weitergefasste vergleichende Analyse bringt einen gemeinsamen Ansatz zur kritischen Analyse der Verbandsstrafbarkeit zum Vorschein, der sich auf das Spannungsverhältnis von Recht und Polizei als grundlegende, in beiden Rechtskreisen zu findende Herrschaftsmechanismen zurückführen lässt. Der Beitrag gliedert sich in eine Darstellung der deutschen und der angloamerikanischen Geschichte des Verbandsstrafrechts (II. & III.), eine vergleichende Analyse (IV.) sowie die sich daraus ergebenden Schlussfolgerungen (V.).

Die Anspruchslosigkeit des awissenschaftlichen Strafrechts

Da sich der Anspruch der deutschen Strafrechtswissenschaft auf Einfluss auf die Strafrechtspflege und gar auf Ausübung einer Kontrollfunktion über die Kriminalpolitik – als eine Art selbst ernannte, als Hüter des Rechtsstaats, wenn auch nicht unbedingt der Verfassung, fungierende vierte Staatsgewalt2 – wesentlich aus ihrem Selbstverständnis als Wissenschaft und dem damit einhergehenden Anspruch sowohl auf Objektivität ihrer Methoden und Ergebnisse als auch auf die außerordentliche Expertenstellung der Strafrechtswissenschaftler (also der Strafrechtsprofessoren) ergibt, handelt es sich hier nicht um eine rein formelle Angelegenheit, so als ob man einfach das Wort Strafrechtswissenschaft mit einem anderen (wie etwa Strafrechtsforschung) ersetzen könnte3.