Actus Reus - Actus Reus Versus Mens Rea, Actus Reus Versus Justificatory Defenses, The Voluntary Act Principle, Common Criticisms Of The Voluntary Act Principle
Actus reus is a term of art in criminal law. Literally the Latin phrase means bad act. The technical, legal use of the phrase denotes one of the elements that must be proven by the prosecution before anyone can be liable to criminal punishment. The actus reus element is the act made criminal by some statute or other valid source of criminal law. Thus, a defendant is said to have committed the actus reus of some offense if he has done some act that is an instance of the type of action prohibited by the offense in question. Murder statutes, for example, typically prohibit the "killing of a human being"; the actus reus of murder is satisfied by any act that is an instance of the type of act so described—that is, any act that is a killing of a human being.
CASES
Commonwealth v. Dusenbery, 220 Va. 770, 263 S.E. 2d 392 (1980).
Powell v. Texas, 392 U.S. 514 (1968).
Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962).
Additional Topics
There are two contrasts with other elements of criminal liability that help to clarify the nature of actus reus. The first is the contrast with mens rea. Mens rea literally translated from the Latin means guilty mind. The technical legal use of the phrase denotes that prerequisite of criminal liability having to do with the state of mind of the accused when he committed the actus reus of some offe…
The second distinction illuminating the nature of actus reus is the distinction between the prima facie case for criminal liability and the defenses. The distinction is a procedural one having to do with allocation of certain burdens in an adversary system. The burdens here pertinent are two: one party or the other is given the burden of producing evidence from which a reasonable fact-finder could…
Having isolated actus reus within the overall requirements for criminal liability, it remains to examine its nature. The general nature of the requirement we have stated earlier: actus reus is the requirement that the accused have performed an action prohibited, at least prima facie, by the criminal law. We gain more insight into the nature of this requirement if we probe the nature of actions the…
Critics of the classic analysis of actus reus are legion. Such critics attack all four aspects of the voluntary act principle, sometimes construing it as a creature of legal doctrine and other times taking it to be a general metaphysical truth about human actions. First, it is urged, there are criminal prohibitions of states and not only of events. In Samuel Butler's fictional Erewhon one c…
If criminal codes only prohibited actions like moving one's finger, then the actus reus requirement would be exhausted by the voluntary act principle. Yet for obvious reasons no criminal code consists exclusively (or even in part) of such prohibitions. We are morally and legally indifferent to such simple actions so no one has any reason to criminalize them. Rather, we criminalize
more c…
One is a moral criticism. The argument is that there is some difference in the culpability of the last pair of would-be cop-killers, and, indeed, as much difference as there is between the first pair of prison bombers. If this is so, then our reason for categorizing all properties of actions into two large clumps disappears. It is hard not to have considerable sympathy for this moral criticism. No…
American Law Institute. Model Penal Code. Philadelphia: ALI, 1962. ——. "On the Moral Irrelevance of Bodily Movements." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1443–1453. ——. "Action and Crime: A Fine-Grained Approach." University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (1994): 1563–1586. ——. "More on Act an…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments Add a comment…