Litigation

9/28 Congressional Hearing: Reining in Overcriminalization

By James R. Copland

Implicit in tomorrow's 10:00 a.m. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on honest services fraud, which Carter linked last week, is the notion that there is a need to "restore" prosecutorial tools after the Skilling decision that reined in the vague federal honest-services-fraud law (see our post here and links therein). As our regular readers know, we tend to be skeptical; see Ted's article here; my op-ed here; and Marie Gryphon's writings here, here, and here.

Interestingly, there is another Congressional hearing tomorrow, on the House side, which promises a look at federal criminal law more in keeping with our views:

At 3 p.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building, room 2141, the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security is holding a hearing entitled "Reining in Overcriminalization: Assessing the Problems, Proposing Solutions." All the hearing details have not yet been released, but based on my knowledge of the staff's plans, it promises to be a very provocative panel with victim witnesses, similar to last summer's hearing on the same topic. Those in the D.C. area should check it out.

Full post as published by Point of Law on September 27, 2010 (boomark / email).