Great Moments in the Life of The Village Voice Capitalist

That's referring to me, not the comic book character.

Anyway, the scene is my Junior year american legal systems class, at my Ivy League university. it is a 150 person lecture. The professor is talking about free speech, decency standards, community standards, polygamy, and child pornography. He is teaching us about Strict Liability-- that is, the theory that applies to certain crimes, that the action is enough, and lack of knowledge or reasonable belief are not defenses. An example of Strict Liability is running a red light. It doesn't matter if you had a good excuse, it doesn't matter if you didn't see the light, and it doesn't matter if you reasonably believed the light wasn't red. If they can show you ran a red light, then you're guilty, automatically.

This contrasts to crimes that have intent components: it isn't murder if you shoot a gun into a wall thinking that there's no one behind the wall and the bullet won't go through the wall, but then the bullet goes through and hits someone.

So another example of strict liability has to do with age of consent laws and child pornography. It doesn't matter if you reasonably believe the girl is 18; if she's 16, then you've committed a crime. period. no defenses.

Shortly before this class, I had been watching VH1, and they did a show about the 80s that mentioned Traci Lord, and the way that she fooled everyone into thinking she was over 18. The entire world was fooled for years and years. a lot of people could have been sent to jail for doing something they thought was perfectly legal and that they did not intend to be wrong in any way.

As we discussed Strict Liability and child pornography in class, I thought to mention this example of a wide swath of people who would have been unjustly punished by a very convincing girl who knew what she was doing. After my soliloquy on the saga of Traci Lords, the class giggled and the professor uncomfortably said "yes, well, I don't know much about that" and he moved on.

It was at least a month later that one of my friends enlightened me to the fact that some people might hesitate to give a long speech about porn to a lecture hall filled with Columbia students. I realized I had failed to cite my story to VH1. Good Job, Barry.