Devin Humphreys (University of Notre Dame Law School) has posted Conspiracy, Contract, and Covenant: Redefining Conspiracy's Actus Reus Through an Analysis of Selected Biblical Agreements on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper articulates the ambiguities in defining, first, whether an agreement exists between would-be co-conspirators, and second, whether a particular offense is within that agreement’s scope. It argues that the actus reus of a conspiracy must necessarily be redefined in terms of a continuous conspiratorial relationship, arriving at that conclusion by examining and analyzing selected agreements and covenants in the Bible. Part I reviews the relevant legal framework surrounding conspiracy. Part II considers the applicability of the definition of “agreement” in the Second Restatement of Contracts to the criminal law context, while Part III articulates the fundamental, immutable problems with such a consideration. Part IV argues in favor of turning to Scripture for historical examples of agreements, contrasting various examples of agreements made in Scripture with contract law and finding the biblical agreements more applicable to the criminal law of conspiracy. Part V argues that since the common thread in all of the examined biblical agreements is the existence of a continuous relationship between the parties at hand, the actus reus of a conspiracy should be correspondingly redefined.