Between 2012 and, an analysis of more than 300 rent escrow cases in the city of Baltimore revealed that neither judges nor plaintiffs in rent escrow cases understood or were correctly applying the relevant laws [1], [2]. Tenants didn't understand the applicable laws or available remedies, and were unable to fill out their rent escrow applications accurately. Judges knew that the documents provided by tenants were probably filled out incorrectly, so they routinely ignored these documents. Thus, many rent escrow cases were decided based on established custom rather than on the facts of the case or relevant laws, and the results tended to favor landlords [1], [3]. A year of iterative design, testing, and re-design resulted in a rent escrow form that could 1) help tenants understand their options and provide accurate information to the court, and 2) provide judges with accurate information while simultaneously reinforcing their understanding of the applicable laws.
It is puzzling that American criminal law recognizes self-defense while rejecting the conceptually similar defense of necessity. Necessity applies where pressing circumstances provoke the defendant to commit an otherwise unlawful act, while self-defense applies where an assailing person does so. Different treatment would make sense if the two defenses were morally distinguishable. But they are morally equivalent, whether considered from the perspective of natural law, social contract theory, or utilitarianism. Rather, the motivation appears to be that the necessity defense, unlike self-defense, implies biological determinism, calling into question the criminal law’s traditional assumption that human beings exercise free will in choosing their actions. And, as its treatment of the necessity defense indicates, American criminal law does not simply proceed from an assumption of free will but silences any contradiction. Such a stance means not only that the necessity defense cannot be accommodated, but also that the legal system cannot make use of the insights of the sciences and social sciences to the extent that they describe human behavior deterministically. However, it may be better for the law to embrace a more salutary kind of inconsistency, one that entertains the possibility that the law is capable of moral improvement and self-correction.
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