Recently in Federalism Category

Gary Fields and Neil King report in the WSJ:

Congress plans this week to create a new, bipartisan task force to pare the federal criminal code, a body of law under attack from both parties recently for its bloat.

The panel, which will be known as the House Committee on the Judiciary Over-Criminalization Task Force of 2013, will comprise five Republicans and five Democrats. It marks the most expansive re-examination of federal law since the early 1980s, when the Justice Department attempted to count the offenses in the criminal code as part of an overhaul effort by Congress.

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Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.) a longtime champion of overhauling the code, will lead the task force. He is expected to reintroduce a bill he has tried to get through several congresses that would cut the size of the criminal code by a third. "Overcriminalization is a threat to personal liberty and an expensive and inefficient way to deal with a lot of problems," he said.

Efforts at criminal law reform are often covers for people whose real agenda is to repeat the disastrous soft-on-crime mistakes of the 60s and 70s (e.g., California's realignment), so my skeptical antenna goes up immediately.  However, the fact that sensible Sensenbrenner is chairing the committee is reassuring.

Our main concern here at CJLF is with acts that every rational person agrees should be criminal, such as murder, rape, robbery, and burglary.  "Overcriminalization" is the use of criminal law to address issues that should be civil matters, and we are okay with efforts to prune that back.  Indeed, the moral force of the criminal law is enhanced by reserving it for genuinely evil acts with evil intent.  It is diluted by extending it to lesser transgressions and by blurring the distinction between intent and error. 

In addition, most crimes should be matters of state law, and as all-weather federalists we are fine with efforts to trim federal law back to its proper territory.  If the committee comes up with proposals to address these issues without going soft on crimes that genuinely deserve strong punishment and genuinely should be federal, it can make a positive contribution.

Carol Bond, that is.  She is a despicable person who may just be right on the legal question.

She is not the only despicable person in the story.  Her husband and best friend had an affair, resulting in the friend's pregnancy.  Bond was certainly justified in being angry and taking action, but poison was over the top.  That is a crime for which she should have been prosecuted and punished -- by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The question is whether Congress has the authority to make a federal case out of it.  The high court previously decided she had standing to raise this objection.  (Opinion here, prior post here.)

Today the Court took up the substantive question.  Orders list is here.  Rick Pildes has this guest post at the Volokh Conspiracy.  Lyle Denniston has this post at SCOTUSblog.