Mens rea and the quiet misdemeanor

Outline. This is not a finished essay.

The claim

A large share of the modern criminal code punishes people who did not know they were committing a crime and were not reckless about the risk. The conduct is often ordinary business. The penalty is still a criminal record, and sometimes a jail term.

What the scorecard already assumes

• Conduct harm is high when the statute aims at peaceful work.
• Office impact is highest for the legislature, because only the legislature can put a knowledge element back into the code as a default.
• Courts that "read in" a mental state are a backup, not a plan.

To be written

• A short history of the default rule the Model Penal Code proposed, and why states that adopted a piece of it still left the regulatory code outside it.
• How a chapter should count "reach" when thousands of rules exist and only dozens are charged.