This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 30th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

When you are charged with a crime, the government is typically required to show that you meant to do so. That requirement known as mens rea has

diminished in its importance at both the state and federal level. At the

State Policy Network's annual meeting this year, Robert Alt, president of the Buckeye Institute in Ohio,

spoke with me about the importance of criminal intent and how states and Congress can reestablish

its proper role in criminal law.

It's very unfortunate.

This has been a trend we've noticed in the law for a while.

Traditionally, the traditional requirements of the criminal law.

You had to commit a bad act,

you know, what lawyers call an act as Reyes,

and you had to have a guilty state of mind, what lawyers refer to as mens rea or criminal intent.

But we've noticed over the years, both at the congressional level as well as at state levels, more and more crimes are being

passed that either have no criminal intent requirement at all where you can be convicted

for mere accidents, or they have inadequate mens rea requirements

or criminal intent requirements.

So what actions or behaviors constitute criminal intent?

That is, it's a lower standard?

In the cases where they have inadequate criminal intent requirements.

You know, sometimes what's required to get a conviction would not be sufficient, we think,

to keep someone who's genuinely trying to follow the law from accidentally violating the law.

...