Youngjae Lee

Youngjae Lee’s scholarship focuses on criminal culpability, criminal procedure, and state punishment, with extensive writing in three areas: the criminalization of disobedience, the principle of proportionality in criminal law, and the criminal jury and reasonable doubt. His book, Criminalizing Disobedience, a philosophical examination of laws that penalize conduct not because it is inherently wrongful but because the government has prohibited it, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2026.

His work has also appeared in Legal Theory, Law and Philosophy, Criminal Law and Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Texas Law Review, and other leading journals and edited collections. Before joining the Fordham faculty in 2005, he was an Alexander Fellow at NYU School of Law and worked as an attorney at Jenner & Block in Washington, D.C., and in the Civil Division’s Federal Programs Branch at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a 1995 graduate of Swarthmore College and a 1999 graduate of Harvard Law School.

Selected Publications

• Criminalizing Disobedience (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2026)
• Reasonable Doubt and Implicit Bias, 18 Criminal Law and Philosophy (forthcoming 2025)
• Reconceptualizing Incomplete Attempt, 37 Criminal Law Forum (forthcoming 2025)
• Abolitionism, Artificial Intelligence, and Non-reformist Reform, 92 Social Research: An International Quarterly (forthcoming 2025)
• Proportionality and Penal Policy, in Research Handbook on Penal Policy (Alessandro Corda ed., Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2025)
• Proportionalities, 99 Notre Dame Law Review Reflection 191 (2024)

• Mala Prohibita, the Wrongfulness Constraint, and the Problem of Overcriminalization, 41 Law and Philosophy 375 (2022)

• Proxy Crimes and Overcriminalization, 16 Criminal Law and Philosophy 469 (2022)

• The State’s Right to Evidence and Duties of Citizenship, 31 Philosophical Issues (A Supplement to Noûs 210 (2021)

• Mala Prohibita and Proportionality, 15 Criminal Law and Philosophy 425 (2021)

• Reasonable Doubt and Disagreement, 23 Legal Theory 203 (2017)

• Reasonable Doubt and Moral Elements, 104 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1 (2016)

• "What is Philosophy of Criminal Law?," 8 Criminal Law and Philosophy 671 (2014)

• "Military Veterans, Culpability, and Blame," 7 Criminal Law and Philosophy 285 (2013)

• "Punishing Disloyalty?: Treason, Espionage, and the Transgression of Political Boundaries," 31 Law and Philosophy 299 (2012)

• "Why Proportionality Matters," 160 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1835 (2012)

• "Recidivism as Omission: A Relational Account," 87 Texas Law Review 571 (2009)

• "The Defense of Necessity and Powers of the Government," 3 Criminal Law and Philosophy 133 (2009)

• "International Consensus as Persuasive Authority in the Eighth Amendment," 156 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 63 (2007)

• "The Constitutional Right Against Excessive Punishment," 91 Virginia Law Review 677 (2005)