Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
This Article examines the relationship between two core principles of American criminal law. On one hand, ignorance of the law is no excuse. On the other hand, criminal liability requires not just a guilty act but also a guilty mind. As the criminal law has become more complex, criminal offenses have increasingly raised issues about whether they require culpability as to issues of law, often bringing culpability requirements and the ignorance maxim into apparent conflict.
In 1962, the American Law Institute published the Model Penal Code (“MPC” or “the Code”). The MPC changed American criminal law significantly, and the Code’s culpability provisions are commonly recognized as the project’s greatest contribution to American law. The Code includes a version of the ignorance maxim, under which a defendant need not be culpable as to whether conduct constitutes an offense. Importantly, however, the Code requires culpability for each element of an offense, and the drafters recognized that offense elements can raise legal issues about laws other than offenses themselves. Hence, the Code requires culpability for countless collateral issues of law that arise under modern statutes, including offenses that require one to violate a civil statute or court order, fail to perform a legal duty, or engage in certain conduct after being convicted of a felony.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of MPC states have undermined the Code’s norm of requiring culpability for offense elements that raise collateral issues of law. Many MPC states decline to exculpate for mistakes of law that negate culpability requirements, and courts often impose strict liability because they confuse mistakes as to offense elements with mistakes about criminality. As a result, MPC states have thwarted some of the Code’s most important provisions. This Article concludes by recommending ways to prevent strict liability for issues of law in MPC states.
Publication Title
American Criminal Law Review
Volume
61
First Page
203
Last Page
249
Keywords
Criminal law, Model Penal Code, mens rea, culpability, strict liability, absolute liability, mental states, mistake, mistake of law
Recommended Citation
Scott England,
The Mistaken Law of Mistakes of Law: Mistakes Negating Culpability Under the Model Penal Code,
61
American Criminal Law Review
203
(2024).
Available at:
https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/law_facultyscholarship/952
