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Criminal Law Spring 2016 (WU)

Lawrence v. Texas

We have just read a few cases that illustrate the concept of legality in terms of the legal institutions that define crimes, the importance of notice, and the dangers of vagueness. Legality, however, goes beyond these somewhat procedural issues to implicate questions of substance: what conduct can a just society legally punish in the first place? Our next case, Lawrence v. Texas, grapples with this question.