California Western School of Law CWSL Scholarly Commons Faculty Scholarship 2017 Stuffed Deer and the Grammar of Mistakes Daniel B. Yeager California Western School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation Yeager, Daniel B., "Stuffed Deer and the Grammar of Mistakes" (2017). Faculty Scholarship. 206. https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/206 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by CWSL Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of CWSL Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Essay Stuffed Deer and the Grammar of Mistakes I. Introduction II. Exculpatory Mistakes III. The Concept of Mistake and Its Limits IV. Inculpatory Mistakes V. Conclusion I. Introduction Impossible attempts were first officially recognized as non-criminal in 1864.1 Not that they needed official recognition. Because “[t]he easiest cases don’t even arise,”2 that 1864 ruling literalized what then had to be a given: a person whose anti-social bent poses no appreciable risk of harm is no criminal. Over 150 years later, scholarly output on the subject persists,3 marked by thoughtful takes on the inner and outer worlds and an odd preoccupation with “imaginative hypotheticals”4 like “Lady Eldon,”5 a difficulty as unlikely to arise 1 Regina v. Collins, 169 Eng. Rep. 1477 (Crown Cases Reserved 1864). 2 K.H. ex rel. Murphy v. Morgan, 914 F.2d 846, 851 (7th Cir. 1990) (Posner, J.).