Mens rea

“ When Congress transplants a common-law term, the “ ‘old soil’ ” comes with it. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 5–6) . So when Congress placed “encourages” and “induces” in clause (iv) , the traditional intent associated with solicitation and facilitation was part of the package. That, in fact, is precisely how the federal aiding-and-abetting statute works. It contains no express mens rea requirement, providing only that a person who “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” a federal offense is “punishable as a principal.” ”

“ This conclusion is buttressed by the intent that must be proved to impose liability. The Court has made clear that scienter requirements alleviate vagueness concerns. Posters 'N' Things, supra, at 526; see also Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 395 (1979) ("This Court has long recognized that the constitutionality of a vague statutory standard is closely related to whether that standard incorporates a requirement of mens rea") . The Act requires the doctor deliberately to have delivered the fetus to an anatomical landmark. ”

“ And critically, the terms that Congress retained (“encourage” and “induce”) substantially overlap in meaning with the terms it omitted (“assist” and “solicit”) . LaFave §13.2 (a) . Clause (iv) is best understood as a continuation of the past, not a sharp break from it.
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Hansen’s primary counterargument is that clause (iv) is missing the necessary mens rea for solicitation and facilitation. Brief for Respondent 28–31. Both, as traditionally understood, require that the defendant specifically intend that a particular act be carried out. ”

“ But even if it be so, let us who have strength and leisure for preference and ideals prepare ourselves to fit, at least to acquiesce, in the changes we are unable to bring about. Do not let us seek our pleasure in things which we condemn, or remain attached to those which are ours only through the imperfect arrangements which we deplore. We are, of course, all tied tight in the meshes of our often worthless and cruel civilisation, even as the saints felt themselves caught in the meshes of bodily life. ”

“ Through all these things, in doubt, despair, poverty, sick feeble or baffled, we have yet to learn reliance. "I will not leave thee or forsake thee," are the words of the most ancient spirit to the spark wandering in the immensity of its own being. ”

“ But, at the same time, I was in readiness for it because of my disposition for generally human feeling and thinking,—I mean: a feeling and thinking in human terms,—a disposition which was not only the product of my individual time and stage of life, but that of the time at large and in general, of OUR time, of the historic convulsions, adventures and tribulations, by which the question of man, the very problem of humanity was presented to us as an indivisible whole, and imposed upon our conscience as hardly ever to a generation before us. ”

“ You can preach awfully against sinners, but when you come to put your doctrines in practice, you say as you did to me, 'I wish I could bear all for you.' Heaven knows I'm selfish enough, but I can at least understand and appreciate generous and kindly sympathy, and could be won by it. But this cool and inflexible elaboration of character, where only the end is considered, and all our timid shrinking and human weakness are ignored,—this austere asceticism which despises the present world and life,—is to me unnatural and monstrous. ”

“ You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being; now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair. ”

“ The growth of the personal character, the reminiscences of a life advancing into perfect consciousness, are largely moulded by the gradual recognition of moral laws, by the sense of mystery evolved in the inevitable struggle between duty and pleasure,--between the desire to do right and the temptation to do wrong. ”

“ In those stern and ferocious, yet tender-hearted and most questioning times, there must have been something logically satisfying, and satisfying also to the harrowed sympathies, in the conviction, if not in the dogma, that the soul of man had not been made by the maker of the foul and cruel world of matter ”

“ The mighty theme commences with that unspeakable suffering by which Man was taught to speak, that strange ascension from the higher anthropoids to a partial rationalism, culminating in that stage of “Reason” which offered the ill-starred creature Man, in lieu of an ample garment for his solace, protection, and utility, a kind of ridiculous swaddling-clothes, in which he could neither walk nor yet inhabit himself with decency. ”

“ And, at the end, man is reaped—the product, not of good alone, but of evil; not of joy alone, but of sorrow—perhaps mellowed and ripened, perhaps stricken and withered and sour. How, then, shall we judge any one?”
Can we not judge a man by his will? Does not such an instrument reflect his character, his nature, and his eccentricities? ”

“ By the consequences I do not mean what the world will think of you, but, rather, the personal results of your action—what you must suffer while you are in the world, and what you must suffer when far beyond the world. ”

“ We reason, and plan, and invent, at least as voluntarily,—as we esteem, or hate, or hope, or fear. How many emotions are there too, which cannot, without absolute torture, be forced into either division! To take only a few instances, out of many,—to what class are we to reduce grief, joy, admiration, astonishment, which perhaps are not phenomena of the mere understanding, and which,—though they may lead indirectly to desires or volitions,—have nothing, in themselves, that is voluntary, or that can be considered as in any peculiar degree connected with the will? ”

“ But how shall we reform the man who has more animal than moral courage, who has lost the true idea of Soul? Through silent argument, convince the mortal of his mistake in seeking such means for procuring happiness. Perhaps reason is the most active human faculty. Let that inform the sentiments, and awaken the man's dormant sense of moral obligation; and by degrees he will learn the nothingness of the pleasures of human sense, and the grandeur and bliss of a diviner sense, superior to matter. ”

“ I have a theory that each of us has a definite amount of human nature, some of it high, some of it low, or, to phrase it differently, some of it animal, some of it spiritual. We can repress one part, and then we become either a saint or a sinner; the better way is to be both saint and sinner, to look life straight in the face, condemning no one, judging no one. ”

“ Here, what I want is known to me by virtue of its contrast with what another wants, and this contrast, rendering relatively clear my consciousness of my own intent, tends, by its very existence, and by reason of the blindness of my passion, to inflame the opposition. In a more benign, but also, as I judge, in even a more primitive form, appears the simple contrast of ego and non-ego in all my imitative, or explicitly plastic and socially submissive, states of consciousness. ”

“ Should I yield to you, you would never forget that I had been false, and, in accordance with your creed, you would ever fear—that is, if your passion lasted long enough—the coming of one still stronger, to whom in the weak necessity of my nature, I again would yield. ”

“ What more favourable disposition could the adversary of mankind wish to see, either in young or old divines, than a wanting and desiring to have figure in the world, either by preferments or rich marriages? Would he find it difficult to enter into those hearts, where the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life has thus entered? Or would he look upon such as but half fitted for him, in comparison of those who entered into holy orders in a spirit of self-denial, and renunciation of the pomps and vanities of the world? ”

“ Is the normal human need, the normal human condition, higher or lower than those special spates of the soul which call out a doubtful and dangerous glory? those special powers of knowledge or sacrifice which are made possible only by the existence of evil? ”

“ So that, as we have said that the first man who, as a being of a large discourse, looking before and after, controlled the blind momentary impulses of the instinct of self-preservation, and controlled the blind momentary impulses of the sexual instinct, had morality revealed to him; so in like manner we may say, that the first man who was thrilled with gratitude, devotion, and awe, at the sense of joy and peace, not of his own making, which followed the exercise of this self-control, had religion revealed to him. ”

“ Are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future? On this point I found and hazarded in my mind the most diverse answers, I established distinctions in periods, peoples, and castes, I became a specialist in my problem, and from my answers grew new questions, new investigations, new conjectures, new probabilities ”

“ As one hand washes the other, may not different members of the series of feelings be subject and object in turn? Compare, for example, the state of mind of a man succumbing to temptation (as he pictures himself enjoying the coveted good and impatiently repudiates scruples of conscience or dictates of prudence) with his state when, filled with remorse, he sides with conscience and condemns this “former self”—the “better self” having meanwhile become supreme. ”

“ Fire his conscience, and he blushes; check his circulation, and he thinks tardily or not at all; impair his secretions, and the moral sense is dulled, discolored, or depraved, his aspirations flag, his hope and love both reel; impair them still more, and he becomes a brute. ”

“ Who has sufficient courage? We have in our hands the possibility of idealising the whole earth. But what am I talking about courage? we only need one thing here—a hand, a free, a very free hand.
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Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can certainly do without them, the problem of the meaning of the ascetic ideal—what has it got to do with yesterday or to-day? ”

“ Even in the first moments of angry surprise and revolt, that sense is quickened; we rebel, not against an inanimate world or an impersonal law, but against a Living and Personal Being, whom we acknowledge as the Arbiter of our destinies, and whose wisdom and love and power we affect for the time to question, but cannot really gainsay. The whole of our experience tends to this end—to the continual rousing of our spiritual consciousness. ”

“ It is moral instinct which has led him to reason out some personal agency in the conduct of human affairs. In other words, it is conscience, which, from the pagan point of view, does " make cowards of us all." ”

“ In the midst of thy afflictions, nature lends thee no support, no comfort except the advice that thou shouldst yield to them. Obey her dictates, and thou shalt sink into the dust; but listen to thyself, and even in the heart of suffering, thou shalt rise up into higher action. ”

“ How much to strengthen or to weaken us; to clear or to cloud our moral atmosphere; to make us fresh and decisive, or to slowly sap our virtue! But it is a more solemn task to compute the influences that proceed from us, and to discover how, unknown to ourselves, we are swaying the circles of other lives. ”

“ He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling. Feelings, as such, he considered to be no proper subjects of praise or blame. Right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct—of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong. ”

“ The rise and fall of the balance of cheerfulness and despair maintained their addled brains in a totally new fluctuation of longing and peace of soul. And in that period psychology served not only to cast suspicion on everything human but to wound and scourge it, to crucify it. ”

“ When the mind—disgusted, depressed, and terrified—turns from the contemplation of those depths of vice, to which human nature may be sunk, a Titus, the delight of mankind—a Trajan—an Antoninus—restore it to an exulting sense of the dignity, [193] to which that nature may be exalted by virtue. ”

“ Self-restraint, uprightness, control of the organs of sense, makes the fell fire of the three deadly sins—sensuality, ill-will and moral sluggishness—die out in the heart by a proper arrangement of the precious vestments, the six cardinal virtues: charity, cleanness, patience, courage, contemplative sympathy with all creation and discrimination of good and evil. ”

“ Why should a stern, condemning voice declare in recesses of my soul, 'You could and should resist'? For years I have been daily yielding to temptation, and conscience as often pronounces sentence against me. ”