Marie Newhouse

Individuals sometimes do things that they know will violate the terms of a statute. Most scholars deny that such actions are always morally wrong, but a coherent theoretical account of the relationships between 1) moral obligation, 2) legal obligation, and 3) criminal wrongdoing that can robustly classify hard cases has been elusive. This article starts with a Kantian account of the relationship between law and morality, and it proposes two closely related standards: one for legal obligation, and another for criminal wrongdoing. It then tests the plausibility and resilience of these standards by using them to generate illuminating new analyses of classic hypothetical cases involving alleged crimes committed under circumstances of necessity. These analyses offer reason to believe that the standards proposed in this article can anchor a Kantian theory of criminal responsibility that is simultaneously rigorous and humane.

There are two distinct types of legal wrongdoing: civil and criminal. This article demonstrates in three ways that Immanuel Kant’s Universal Principle of Right, properly interpreted, offers a plausible and resilient account of this important distinction. First, Kant’s principle correctly identifies attempted crimes as crimes themselves even when they do not violate the rights of any individual. Second, it justifies our treatment of reckless endangerment as a crime by distinguishing it from ordinary negligence, which traditionally is only civilly wrong. Third, it justifies differences between the way in which we determine criminal punishments and the way in which we measure civil remedies. Moreover, the Universal Principle of Right yields a Kantian standard for criminal wrongdoing that is compelling enough to inform future philosophical inquiries into the nature and limits of the state’s criminal lawmaking authority.

Dennis F. Thompson developed a theory of “institutional corruption” in order to explain a phenomenon that he believed the Congressional ethics rules failed to address: Congress’ systematic deviation from its proper purpose as a consequence — not merely of individual wrongdoing — but of the influence of several general systemic features of the legislative process. Researchers at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics have recently deployed the language of institutional corruption broadly in analyses of various other public and private institutions, such as regulatory agencies, banks, pharmaceutical companies, and think tanks. The states of affairs that researchers have identified as “institutional corruption” fall into four categories: 1) breaches of fiduciary duty, 2) fraud or otherwise unfair commercial practices, 3) destructive firm behavior, and 4) mistake, inefficiency, or incompetence. This Article reveals that only the first of these represents a true application of Dennis F. Thompson’s theory of institutional corruption, which was originally developed in the context of Congressional ethics. Research projects that deploy the terminology of institutional corruption in non-fiduciary contexts are certainly valuable, but they do not address the subject matter of institutional corruption, properly understood.