Model Penal Code
Definition
A model statute drafted by the American Law Institute and published in 1962, never itself binding law, but widely adapted by United States state legislatures when drafting their own penal codes.
Related terms
- Codification
- The consolidation of criminal law into a single systematic statute, or code, drafted in advance, as opposed to letting offences accumulate through...
- Criminalisation
- The formal process by which a legislature converts a previously lawful or merely deviant act into a criminal offence, typically by enacting...
- Harm Principle
- The idea, associated with John Stuart Mill, that the only legitimate ground for the state to restrict a person's conduct through law...
- Legal Moralism
- The position, associated with Patrick Devlin, that the state may criminalise conduct simply because a society's shared moral code condemns it, even...
- Moral Panic
- A period of intense, media-driven public anxiety about a group or behaviour perceived as an exceptional threat to social order. Coined by...
- Overcriminalisation
- A pattern in which legislatures create so many criminal offences, including minor regulatory ones, that the criminal law's reach outgrows its capacity...