{"id":17008,"date":"2024-01-20T12:31:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T17:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/?page_id=17008"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:12:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:12:59","slug":"dealing-with-dead-crimes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/in-print\/volume-111\/volume-111-issue-1-october-2022\/dealing-with-dead-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with Dead Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Our criminal codes are replete with \u201cdead crimes\u201d\u2014crimes that are openly violated, have long gone unenforced, and no longer reflect majoritarian views. At common law, judges could eliminate these crimes as they refined substantive criminal law through the development of precedent. As our criminal justice system entered the statutory age, however, that mechanism was lost. And federal, state, and local legislatures have continuously added crimes to the books while rarely clearing outdated ones.\n\t\t<span class='js-footnote footnote'>\n\t\t\t<button type='button' aria-controls='abstract_footnote_17008_1' class='footnote_inline_btn js-footnote-toggle-btn' aria-describedby='footnote_btn_text_abstract_footnote_17008_1'>\n\t\t\t\t<sup class='footnote_inline_btn_number'>1<\/sup>\n\t\t\t\t<span id='footnote_btn_text_abstract_footnote_17008_1' class='visually_hide'>Open footnote #1<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/button>\n\t\n\t\t\t<cite id='abstract_footnote_17008_1' class='footnote_content_cite js-footnote-content'>\n\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content_wrap'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<button type='button' class='footnote_content_number js-footnote-toggle-btn' aria-controls='abstract_footnote_17008_1' tabindex='-1'>1<\/button>\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content_wrap_inner'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='visually_hide'>Footnote #1 content: <\/span><i>See infra <\/i>Part II. While non-criminal laws can also fall into disuse, they are less prone to do so. Even non-criminal laws that are \u201canachronistic\u201d tend to remain vital because civil \u201clitigants find them advantageous in their own specific situations.\u201d GUIDO CALABRESI, A COMMON LAW FOR THE AGE OF STATUTES 17\u201330 (1982); <i>see also <\/i>Newman F. Baker, <i>Legislative Crimes<\/i>, 23 MINN. L. REV. 135, 137 (1939) (noting that updates to social legislation, particularly penal codes, are less prevalent than updates to other types of legislation, such as business codes).\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_close_btn_wrap'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<button type='button' class='footnote_close_btn js-footnote-close-btn' aria-label='Back to content'>close<\/button>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/cite>\n\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<p>Continue Reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/11\/Johnson-Dealing-with-Dead-Crimes.pdf\"><em>Dealing with Dead Crimes<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/26\/2022\/11\/Johnson-Dealing-with-Dead-Crimes.pdf\" class=\"pdfemb-viewer\" style=\"\" data-width=\"max\" data-height=\"max\" data-toolbar=\"bottom\" data-toolbar-fixed=\"off\">Johnson, Dealing with Dead Crimes<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our criminal codes are replete with \u201cdead crimes\u201d\u2014crimes that are openly violated, have long gone unenforced, and no longer reflect majoritarian views. At common law, judges could eliminate these crimes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10024,"featured_media":0,"parent":17015,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-17008","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17008"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23226,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17008\/revisions\/23226"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}