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The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), working through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, in 2010 surveyed national attitudes toward white collar crime, estimated by the FBI to cost between 300 and 660 billion dollars per year. When asked if the government was allocating sufficient resources to combat white-collar crime, 43% of respondents to the NW3C survey mentioned above said government was not. A solid majority of those responding believed that white-collar crime has contributed to the current economic crisis, with 70% finding it had contributed and only 13% saying it had not.
One of the issues related to white-collar crime is how it should be defined. Are white-collar crimes a type of crime, or are white-collar crimes defined by who commits them? Cynthia Barnett, writing for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, discusses this issue in the FBI Bulletin The Measurement of White Collar Crime Using Uniform Crime Reporting Data.http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/nibrs/nibrs_wcc.pdf (highlight and paste into your browser).
Corporate scandals in the later 90s and early 21st century resulted in a tightening of sentencing guidelines for white-collar criminals, and sentences have been increasingly harsh. Some now say they are too harsh for nonviolent crimes, and that many of these individuals are not only first offenders, but are unlikely to commit crimes again.
What do you think? Is a white-collar crime descriptive of a certain kind of crime, or a certain kind of criminal? Are we tough enough on white-collar crime? Are sentences for white-collar crime too harsh or too lenient?
Lying (graded) |
Read Would You Lie to Save Your Company? Did the CEO do the right thing? Who benefited from his choice? To whom did he owe his primary duty as a CEO? Any other observations?
week 2 discn
The Constitution—A Living Document? (graded) |
The Constitution is a form of a contract—the contract was made among the 13 original states to form a stronger federal government. That contract was made in 1787—more states have joined the Union and have accepted the Constitution—but what did they accept? The contract (the Constitution) was formed in 1787—since that time, many things have changed, including the meanings of words. How should we interpret that contract today?
Which of the following statements best describes the approach to constitutional interpretation that you believe judges should follow? Explain why you think your answer is the correct one.
- Judges should apply the intentions of the framers, as best as they can determine it.
- Judges should look at the words of the provision in question and base their decisions as best they can on the plain meaning of the language.
- Judges should generally follow precedent (the decisions in previous cases under the same constitutional provisions) as much as possible, looking to the text and intentions of the framers only
when the case law is unclear.
Legal Rights, Legal Duties (graded) |
Evaluate and discuss the following view, and state whether it would be accepted as generally correct by most lawyers and judges: “A person who has both rights and duties” defines the most basic concept of the law.
Remember, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, are a recitation of guarantees of rights. The Bill of Rights does notgrant rights, it simply recites what were and are recognized as the rights of citizens—and that enumeration of rights doesn’t mean that there are not other rights retained by the people, as is stated in the Ninth Amendment.
Most of a person’s legal duties are duties to abstain from certain actions,for example, to abstain from theft, harmful physical violence, or deception-for-profit. But a few legal duties require positive action, (i.e., to remove from one’s yard an attractive but dangerous object which might injure another person, and to pay income tax).
