Friday, December 17, 2004

Bush and The Criminal Law

"One who is the aqggressor in a conflict culiminating in death cannot invoke the necessities of self-preservation. Only in the event that he communicates to his adversary his intent to withdraw and in good faith attempts to do so is he restored to his right of self defense." US v. Peterson

At the common law there developed the rule of "retreat to the wall" - which forbade the use of deadly force by one whom an avenue for safe retreat was open.

General Defenses to Crimes in Dresseler is an interesting chapter. The above notions are in fact used by my GOP friends... "Iraq attacked us on 9/11 by taking down the WTC. Therefore, our invasion is justified."

It reminds me of how "Poland" invaded Germany in 1939 and had no-choice but to take aggressive, powerful Poland on directly. Everything else after that were "pre-emptive" self-defense measures. The closest thing I can find to pre-emptive-ness in Criminal Law is Battered Wife Syndom, and even that is a stretch.

I may or may not pass Criminal Law, but I'll at least have fun with it either way. Here goes...

2 Comments:

At Friday, December 17, 2004 2:26:00 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I had to post a quick comment.
1. I had a hypo on my exam that about the retreat/self-defense thing; and
2. Dressler teaches crim law at my school, but as the luck of the draw would have it, he didn't teach my class.

 
At Friday, December 17, 2004 9:57:00 PM, Blogger majqa said...

I managed to throw the retreat thingy in on my 3rd essay problem, which asked us to (sort-of) discuss defense issues and the Goetz subway killer case and contrast it with the case of the battered-spouse case. To be honest, I had too much fun with it and deviated from the whole IRAC style. It (sadly) broke down into an narrative and that is almost always a BAD thing to do in law school. I tried to keep it clean and brief, but it was hard as I knew a lot about both cases. My other essay's were pretty tight though, so hopefully the judge won't slaughter my hog.

I really enjoyed Criminal Law. Then aqain, it's law school, and at Cooley I think it is an honor code violation to enjoy a class. Hopefully, the deans won't find out.

 

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