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

• 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)
• Problem of Proportional Punishment, in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment (Farah Focquaert, Bruce Walker & Elizabeth Shaw, eds., 2021)
• Proportionality in Punishment, in The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and Criminal Law (Kimberly Kessler Ferzan & Larry Alexander, eds., 2019)
• Criminalization, Legal Moralism, and Abolition, 70 University of Toronto Law Journal 194 (2020) (review essay on R.A. Duff, The Realm of Criminal Law (2018))
• The Criminal Jury, Moral Judgements, and Political Representation, 2018 University of Illinois Law Review 1255 (2018)
• Reasonable Doubt and Disagreement, 23 Legal Theory 203 (2017)
• Multiple Offenders and the Question of Desert, in Sentencing Multiple Crimes 113 (Jesper Ryberg, Julian V. Roberts & Jan W. de Keijser eds., 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)
• "Deontology, Political Morality, and the State," 8 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 385 (2011) (invited contribution for Symposium on Criminal Law and Political Theory)
• "Desert, Deontology, and Vengeance," 42 Arizona State Law Journal 1141 (2011) (invited comment on Paul H. Robinson, "The Ongoing Revolution in Punishment Theory: Doing Justice as Controlling Crime");
• "The Purposes of Punishment Test," 23 Federal Sentencing Reporter 58 (2010) (invited comment on Graham v. Florida)
• "Repeat Offenders and the Question of Desert," in The Role of Previous Convictions at Sentencing: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives (Julian V. Roberts & Andrew von Hirsch eds., 2010)
• "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)
• "Desert and the Eighth Amendment," 11 University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 101 (2009) (Symposium on Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Litigating under the Eighth Amendment)
• "International Consensus as Persuasive Authority in the Eighth Amendment," 156 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 63 (2007)
• "Judicial Regulation of Excessive Punishments through the Eighth Amendment," 18 Federal Sentencing Reporter 234 (2006)
• "The Constitutional Right Against Excessive Punishment," 91 Virginia Law Review 677 (2005)
• "Punishment as Reluctant Moralism," 1 Criminal Law and Philosophy 227 (2007) (review of Andrew von Hirsch and Andrew Ashworth, Proportionate Sentencing: Exploring the Principles (2005))
• "Law, Politics, and Impeachment: The Impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun from a Comparative Constitutional Perspective," 53 American Journal of Comparative Law 403 (2005)