One day someone will write a comprehensive, scholarly and multi-disciplinary study of the phenomenon of federal overcriminalization. Until then, this is a valuable resource for a topic thusfar known mostly through experience and anecdote. The author/editor has collected several law review articles, all of which were apparently published before in other places under the auspices of the Cato Institute. Each of these articles is excellent, but they are all quite specialized, and serve only as case studies. They give glipses of the "big picture" of mission creep in federal criminal law, but the details remain indistinct. They also have an unfortunate "think-tanky" feel to them, leaving the impression of a lack of objectivity. Libertarians will be convinced, but civil-rights-minded liberals may take the Cato imprint as an indication of bias. That is unfortunate, because there is nothing partisan about the very real problem these essays document.
The author/editor is to be commended for paying attention to vice and drug crimes. Too often, commentators in this area focus only on white-collar crime. This is understandable, since this is where the money is. But prostitutes, murderers, and drug dealers can be federal criminal defendants, too, and they too are often victims of overcriminalization. Mandatory minimum sentences can be every bit as frightening as the responsible corporate officer doctrine.
Ultimately, this book is more than a success. But it is also an invitation to delve deeper into overcriminalization, an area ripe for new scholarship.
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