NCJ Number
104952
Journal
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume: 77 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1986) Pages: 78
Date Published
1986
Length
21 pages
Annotation
Based on the presupposition that legal thought influences legal behavior, this paper examines three fictions central to drunk driving law with respect to societal harm and individual responsibility.
Abstract
These legal fictions include (1) the highly suspect empirical assumption of risk that permits the attribution of culpability to drinking drivers, (2) the fictitious logic underlying the use of published blood alcohol concentration as proof of drunk driving, and (3) the potential fiction of a rebuttable presumption that alcohol use is the cause of injury or death in alcohol-related accidents. It is argued that because legal countermeasures to drunk driving are premised on faulty logic, inaccuracies, and inadequate empirical proof, resources are wastefully spent on the prosecution, punishment, and treatment of many drinking drivers who neither deserve nor profit from such responses. Such responses serve no valid retributive, deterrent, or rehabilitative end. They can be rationalized only by appeals to declaratory or educative aims that may be better served through mechanisms other than the criminal law. 90 references.