The Persistence of Boundaries: A Reply to Rosen-Zvi and Fisher

Virginia Law Review In Brief Vol. 94, November 10, 2008, pp. 75-83

9 Pages Posted: 28 May 2013

Date Written: November 10, 2008

Abstract

Professors Issachar Rosen-Zvi and Talia Fisher, by finally advancing a plausible way to dispense with the criminal-civil procedural bifurcation, make a valuable contribution to the discussion around the blurry distinction between the civil law and the criminal law. They propose making procedural protections contingent solely upon the severity of the sanction and upon the symmetry (or lack thereof) between the adversarial parties in the proceeding. This approach eliminates the need to draw false distinctions between nearly identical sanctions, to divine a legislature’s motivation, or to apply procedural safeguards that are either excessively high or dangerously low. But the authors’ attempt to erase boundaries ends up erecting new ones, which are perhaps equally arbitrary and dysfunctional. Professors Rosen-Zvi and Fisher acknowledge that their proposed procedural model is not a finished product, so in this brief reply, I hope to direct their attention and others’ to a few areas that warrant closer examination.

Keywords: civil procedure, criminal procedure, civil-criminal distinction

JEL Classification: K14, K40, K41

Suggested Citation

Blenkinsopp, Alexander, The Persistence of Boundaries: A Reply to Rosen-Zvi and Fisher (November 10, 2008). Virginia Law Review In Brief Vol. 94, November 10, 2008, pp. 75-83, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2270925

Alexander Blenkinsopp (Contact Author)

Harvard University ( email )

Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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