Reservations About Overcriminalization

In this paper, I describe what I regard as the most serious challenge to the theory of criminalization I defended in my 2008 book Overcriminalization. I explore whether the criminal law is special—sufficiently different from other bodies of law to raise justificatory concerns that warrant separate treatment from philosophers of law. Arguably, the criminal law is so broad and diverse that no meaningful normative generalizations can be applied to it as a whole. I respond to this concern here.