Finding out Criminal Law - An Academic Approach to Criminal Intent

The justice program, criminal law, and crime capture the consideration in the basic public, students, lawyers, and academics. Scholars and law students teach and study legal precedent as well as modern practice. A great deal discussion and debate within the academy centers on mens rea, identified extra popularly as criminal intent.

The definition of crimes under both popular and modern law consists of four elements. These four more information components are: (1) A voluntary act (also known as actus reus) performed with (2) a culpable thoughts (also called mens rea) (three) that brought on (four) social harm.

The expression mens rea "is the thought behind the classic maxim, actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea. Or in Blackstone's translation, 'an unwarrantable act without having a vicious will is no crime at all... ' [Mens rea] basically... refers towards the blameworthiness entailed in deciding on to commit a criminal wrong." SANFORD H. KADISH & STEPHEN J. SCHULHOFER, CRIMINAL LAW AND ITS PROCESSES 203 (7th ed. 2001).

Criminal law deals with levels of intentionality, a narrowly circumscribed concept. One may contrast the narrow scope of intentionality with the broader concept of motive. Intent addresses "what" a person did. Motive, on the other hand, addresses "why" the person did it.

The narrow scope of mens rea provides a crucial screening device. Because it is narrow, it allows the criminal justice program to screen socially harmful conduct from conduct that is socially permissible or even encouraged. Motive, on the other hand, was generally irrelevant to the definition of frequent law crimes. The typical law did not concern itself with the reasons for the conduct, but rather the conduct itself.

Courts defined widespread law crimes with a mens rea element of either specific intent or basic intent. General intent connoted an exceedingly broad mens rea meaning. These basic intent crimes were characterized as those performed with moral blameworthiness. Instead of providing clarity, however, this vague definition bred confusion in both English and American law.

Specific intent connoted a narrower meaning. As defined each beneath widespread law and used by courts in England and America for interpreting statutes, specific intent meant either (1) a desire to cause a social harm, or (two) knowledge to a virtual certainty that harm will result.