All parts of our class aim to help you develop your own "criminal law imagination" (CLI) By this I refer to your ideal blaming and punishing regime. We spend our Wednesday afternoons together interrogating a wide range of topics to help you develop your your CLI: Here are some:
1. What's criminal law and what's it good for?
2. Should we punish people only for what they do? or for what they might do? or even sometimes for who they are?
3. What are the justifications and excuses for committing crimes? Topics include defenses of justification (self-defense, defense of home) and defenses of excuse (insanity, age)
4. Partners in Crime: What should happen when teamwork hurts innocent people?
6. Uncompleted crimes: What should happen when people try to hurt other people but they fail?
5. What's the role of criminal law in unwanted sex?
6. What should happen to government officials sworn to serve and protect us and our constitutional rights, when they abuse their power?
7. How much protection should the Constitution provide to non citizens?
8. Cyberwar: How do we fight wars with malware on the internet instead of traditional weapons of war?
A final word: You'll probably learn some actual criminal law in our interactive journey through the topics in the list. Good for you. But, remember our goal is above all to work on developing your CLI.