Criminalizing Disobedience

Many laws penalize conduct not because it is inherently wrongful but because the government has prohibited it. Criminalizing Disobedience examines this important yet underexplored aspect of modern criminal law. Such ＂disobedience offenses＂ include: administration of justice crimes (contempt, obstruction of justice, perjury); failure-to-assist crimes (hindering prosecution, receiving stolen property, money laundering, failure to register or to report); regulatory offenses (involving, for example, environmental, drug, or medical device laws); preventive offenses (attempt, possession of weapons or drugs); and national security offenses (treason, espionage, export control and sanctions violations). What unifies these otherwise disparate offenses is that their core wrong lies in noncompliance with legal directives, not in unjustifiably harming or endangering others. The principal reason to refrain from such conduct is simply that the government has said not to do it. By contrast, laws against, say, murder or rape prohibit conduct that is morally wrongful even in the absence of legal prohibition.

This book addresses the important normative and conceptual questions these laws raise: How should disobedience be understood? Is it blameworthy to disobey the state? In what ways does the state criminalize and punish disobedience? What should be the limits to the state’s power to demand obedience and punish disobedience?

Criminalizing Disobedience explores these questions across a range of legal domains and develops a philosophically sophisticated framework for evaluating such laws. In the process, it sheds new light on longstanding questions of political obligation, criminalization, and punishment. It will be of interest to scholars of criminal law, the administrative state, law and philosophy, and political philosophy.

Youngjae Lee is Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. Lee’s scholarship focuses on criminal culpability, criminal procedure, and state punishment, with sustained contributions in three areas: criminalization of disobedience, the principle of proportionality in criminal law, and the criminal jury and reasonable doubt. He has held visiting positions at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, NYU Law School, University of Chicago Law School, UCLA School of Law, Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, European University Institute, and LUISS Guido Carli. He serves on the editorial boards of Law and Philosophy and Criminal Law and Philosophy.