Most criminal law defenses serve the criminal law’s goal of shielding blameless defendants from liability. Justification defenses, such as self- defense and law enforcement authority, exculpate on the ground that the defendant’s conduct, on balance, does not violate a societal norm. Excuse defenses, such as insanity and duress, exculpate on the ground that, while the defendant may well have violated a societal norm, it was done blamelessly. That is, it is the excusing conditions, not the defendant, that is to blame. In contrast, a third group of general defenses, which have been called “non-exculpatory defenses,” bar liability in instances where the defendant may have clearly violated a societal norm with full blameworthiness yet nonetheless is exempt from criminal liability because giving the exemption advances some societal interest independent of—and in conflict with—the criminal law’s goal of imposing deserved punishment in proportion to an offender’s blameworthiness. Non-exculpatory defenses openly sacrifice doing justice in order to promote the competing non-justice interest. A wide variety of non-exculpatory defenses are commonly recognized, including, for example, statutes of limitation, executive and legislative immunities, double jeopardy, diplomatic immunity, and the doctrines of the legality principle. Each of these defenses let blameworthy offenders go free even for serious crimes because such restraint promotes or protects some non-desert societal interest. Our examination of the doctrines suggests, however, that those balances of competing interests are commonly misaligned. This occurs in some instances because societal circumstances have significantly changed since the initial formulation of the defense, without any corresponding revision of the doctrine. In other instances, there is reason to suspect that no thoughtful balancing of the competing interests ever took place, perhaps because at the time there was insufficient appreciation of the practical importance of doing justice and the societal costs of regular failures of justice. In this article, we illustrate the problem by examining the three most commonly used non-exculpatory defenses: statutes of limitation, the double jeopardy rule, and the legality principle’s rule of strict construction. We acknowledge that each of these defenses was created to promote or protect an important societal interest. But we show that in each instance the societal circumstances have changed, altering the balance of competing interests, yet the formulation of the doctrines has not been adjusted accordingly. Our larger conclusion is that non-exculpatory defenses, based as they are upon a balance of competing societal interests, rather than principles of societal harm and personal blameworthiness, require constant re-examination and adjustment in ways that justification and excuse defenses do not.

大多数刑法辩护都服务于刑法的目标，即保护无过错的被告免受责任。正当防卫，例如自卫和执法机关，以被告的行为总体上不违反社会规范为由进行开脱。诸如精神错乱和胁迫之类的辩解辩护理由是，虽然被告很可能违反了社会规范，但其行为是无可指责的。也就是说，罪魁祸首是辩解条件，而不是被告。相比之下，第三组一般抗辩，被称为“非无罪抗辩”，在被告可能明显违反了完全应受谴责的社会规范的情况下禁止承担责任，但由于给予豁免预付款而可以免除刑事责任一些社会利益独立于刑法的目标，即根据罪犯的罪责程度施加应有的惩罚，但与之相冲突。非无罪辩护公开牺牲正义，以促进竞争的非正义利益。人们普遍承认各种各样的非无罪辩护，包括诉讼时效、行政和立法豁免、双重危险、外交豁免和合法性原则等。这些辩护中的每一种都让应受谴责的罪犯逍遥法外，即使犯有严重罪行，因为这种限制促进或保护了一些非应得的社会利益。然而，我们对这些学说的审查表明，竞争利益的平衡通常是失调的。在某些情况下会发生这种情况，因为自最初提出辩护以来，社会环境发生了重大变化，而没有对原则进行任何相应的修改。在其他情况下，我们有理由怀疑，没有对相互竞争的利益进行深思熟虑的平衡，也许是因为当时没有充分认识到伸张正义的实际重要性以及正义经常失败的社会成本。在本文中，我们通过研究三种最常用的非无罪抗辩来说明问题：诉讼时效、双重危险规则和合法性原则的严格解释规则。我们承认，每项防御措施都是为了促进或保护重要的社会利益而创建的。但我们表明，在每一个例子中，社会环境都发生了变化，改变了竞争利益的平衡，但学说的表述却没有相应地调整。我们更大的结论是，非无罪辩护基于相互竞争的社会利益的平衡，而不是社会危害和个人应受谴责的原则，因此需要不断地重新审查和调整，而正当理由和借口辩护则不需要。