The Contract: Between Contract Law and Criminal Jurisprudence

Authors

Roni Rosenberg, Carmel Academic Center

First Page

444

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The structure of the essay is as follows: Part I presents the general legal premise that enables the conviction of one who has caused harm by an omission in cases where the duty to act originates in a contractual obligation and highlights U.S. case law on this topic. Part II distinguishes between the duty to act that originates in a contract and a similar duty that is mentioned in case law and literature: the actual assumption of responsibility for a potential victim. Part III introduces various scenarios to assist in examining which contracts can serve as a source of a duty to act in criminal jurisprudence. Part IV analyzes these scenarios in terms of the liberty and causation rationales and concludes that it is possible to look at the entire issue from two different perspectives-the contract law perspective and the criminal law perspective.

Recommended Citation

Roni Rosenberg, The Contract: Between Contract Law and Criminal Jurisprudence, 26 St. Thomas L. Rev. 444 (2014).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol26/iss4/5