"One might assume that in a working democracy the criminal law rules would reflect the community’s shared judgments regarding justice and punishment....
It may then come as a surprise, and a disappointment, that a wide range of common rules in modern criminal law seriously conflict with community justice judgments, including three strikes and other habitual offender statutes, abolition or narrowing of the insanity defense, adult prosecution of juveniles, felony murder, strict liability offenses, and a variety of other common doctrines.
In short, democratically elected legislatures have regularly chosen to adopt criminal law rules that conflict with the deep and abiding intuitions of their constituents."
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