Final Post, Canaan Stuart
To begin with, I’d like to list out the course questions…
- What are permissible ends of criminalization? (i.e. what can we try to achieve by making certain behaviors criminal?)
2. What means can we permissibly take to achieve permissible ends? (i.e. how can we use criminal law to achieve ends that are worth achieving?)
3. What features must something have before we can permissibly criminalize it?
4. When should we hold people responsible for criminalized behavior?
5. What ends can we try to achieve by punishing those responsible for criminalized behavior?
6. When must we punish the deserving?
Now that we have a complete list of the questions in the order of the modules, I’d like to tell you how this course works and why these questions are important.
In this course every module will begin with a simple question, which is the brilliance of the whole idea. This simple question doesn’t give you ANY sort of answer for it, but instead asks YOU, the student, to analyze the right answers.
Why is this so important? Because by the end of the course you will have traversed every ethical question which makes us criminal law, and the idea of justice. With every question and module comes multiple readings of various opinions which can lead you to your very own conclusion. Along with this there will be a lecture which serves more as a class discussion, enabling the professor as well as the students to create an answer.
These questions are important because they make up the heart of the course. What is this class? It IS these questions, you must decide what is true justice. This is much more involving than simply taking tests with specific right answers. In this course you must be judge, jury, and…. well not an executioner but you might feel like one at times whenever you see where your mind takes you on the path to answering these questions. They all revolve around each other, and by the end of the course you will have a distinct philosophy on crime and justice.
