A strict liability crime is something of an oxymoron. Crimes always require intent, the mens rea element. The question is intent for what. If somebody drugged you without your knowledge and you were charged with a DUI, you would have a defense--no intent to become intoxicated.
The strict liability means once you choose to become intoxicated, you're liable for driving intoxicated, even if in some other context your intoxication would mean you couldn't form the requisite intent for something, e.g. have sex.
If there's too much distance between the act you intend to do and the strict liability acts that complete the crime, then the crime would be considered unconstitutional.
Criminal law in common law systems emerged from tort law, so there are many parallels, including the notion of strict liability. (Thus the old axiom about crimes being an offense to the king, specifically an injury to the peaceful society he's ostensibly trying to maintain.) But criminal law has a moral dimension that is absent or muted in other areas, so strict liability could never be as expansive as in tort law or regulatory law.
> A strict liability crime is something of an oxymoron. Crimes always require intent, the mens rea element.
This is wrong.
In criminal and civil law, strict liability is a standard of liability under which a person is legally responsible for the consequences flowing from an activity even in the absence of fault or criminal intent on the part of the defendant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability
That is just not true. You can be held liable for DUI even if you did not intend to become intoxicated (though this may vary somewhat state-by-state). Speeding is another example - you do not need to intend to go over the speed limit, it just matters that you did it. The only possible exception would be duress or necessity, but those are affirmative defenses, which are separate from the elements of the offense.
As a summary of American criminal jurisprudence I'm willing to stand by what I said. But I'll admit some caveats:
1) Traffic-related laws straddle the boundary between civil/regulatory law and criminal law. Someone losing their driver's license or even paying a penalty for involuntary intoxication would still be consonant with criminal law principles. However, a criminal punishment would be aberrational. (Distinction between a civil penalty and criminal punishment usually turns on whether there's a moral purpose to the sanction. Jail time is usually but not always--cf civil contempt incarceration--considered a criminal punishment.)
2) Background principles notwithstanding, in theory a state could completely dispense with any morality-colored mens rea requirement, just as the UK Parliament could do whatever it wants to. The backstop would be Federal constitutional [substantive] due process guarantees.
2.a) Some quick searching shows that Texas nominally seems to have dispensed with this requirement for DWIs. See e.g. Farmer v. State, 411 S.W.3d 901 (Tex. Crim. App. 2013) and some discussion at https://www.ncdd.com/top-dui-attorneys-blog/involuntary-into... Without having fully read the case law, though (but some summaries of that and other cases), I suspect there might be some nuance that has allowed this to stand without a full majority accepting that the traditional principles have been completely thrown out. For example, even if someone didn't know they were taking Ambien, the simple act of voluntarily taking any pill without careful examination can be construed as a sufficiently culpable act. Still, it's a pretty big caveat.
2.b) Statutory rape is a classic strict liability crime. But most states will permit a mistake-of-fact defense. Some don't, but even there there's sometimes some nuance and rationalizing going on and the literature is crazy complex. Because this is a "think of the children" situation, most case will just have horrible facts.
3) A few states have nominally dispensed with insanity defenses, though Kansas stands out the most. SCOTUS upheld Kansas' law in Kahler v. Kansas, but in the majority opinion Kagan characterized the Kansas law as not abolishing the insanity defense but rather changing its shape, and she showed that there still remained elements for which a defendant could plea lacked the requisite intent. Also, regarding the Federal constitution acting as backstop, she reiterated that SCOTUS was reticent to establish strict metes & bounds about the general principles of criminal law that states could not stray beyond. Nonetheless, those principles clearly exist.
I had some other points, but now I've forgotten them. Also, minor pedantic point, but like "strict liability crime", some scholars consider "affirmative defense" to be oxymoronic. As a substantive matter there's not a strong distinction. It's a procedural distinction about initial burdens of proof, but in most if not all cases you can interpret an affirmative defense as simply placing a very weak initial burden on the prosecution that is implicitly met.
(Note, I'm not a practicing lawyer but do have a law degree.)
EDIT: Ah, point 4) Intent was a big sticking point in the Obamacare penalty case, Sebelius. Both the dissent and Roberts (the swing vote) reiterated that you couldn't have a penalty or punishment for doing nothing. (IIRC some of the majority opinions also echoed this.) That is, even in a civil context there has some to be some voluntary act, however remote, that puts someone in a position to be subject to legal liability. But as Roberts pointed out, the taxing power is the great exception, where you can be required to do something merely for existing, and thus penalized for not doing nothing properly. (And Roberts was the critical swing vote.)
Are you a lawyer?
Fairly certain that the entire point of strict liability is that mens rea is not required for certain crimes. As in, if I meant to travel at 70 and was instead doing 100 it doesn’t matter that I sincerely meant not to speed and did not know I was speeding, I can still be convicted even if the judge believes I had no intent.
The way we use mens rea in our legal system is more like "mind of the criminal," not outright literal intent.
Negligence can be "unintentional" but still land you in the realm of having a guilty criminal mind.
I find it to be a reasonable take. If you're accidentally going 100 in a 70 (which is a misdemeanor in california), you're not being a careful enough driver, and we deem that lack of care criminal.
> Negligence can be "unintentional" but still land you in the realm of having a guilty criminal mind.
That’s just another way of saying “not all crimes require a guilty mind” with extra steps
Strict liability literally is crimes that don't require a guilty mind.
That's different (sometimes) when, for example, you're found guilty of criminal negligence leading to someone being injured.
Prosecutors don't have to demonstrate that you intended for someone to get hurt for that, your mens rea is that you should have perceived the danger of what you were doing but didn't.
edit: reading your other comments in this thread, maybe I missed your point, in which case, whoosh.
> As in, if I meant to travel at 70 and was instead doing 100 it doesn’t matter that I sincerely meant not to speed and did not know I was speeding, I can still be convicted even if the judge believes I had no intent.
IANAL but from what I've looked up in the last there's at least willfulness that matters for these things. For example if you could prove that happened because your car accelerator pedal broke and you had no opportunity to react, I'm pretty sure you would not be guilty, strict liability or not.
At that point you are not so much "driving" as you are sitting in the driver's seat of a renegade vehicle.
There are exceptions usually for extraordinary events.
In New York there’s a concept of doing various things “in the furtherance of justice”. Judges have broad discretion to dismiss or reduce tickets.
Often it so happens that those reductions increase the city/towns share of the revenue.
In those cases, the judge may find that circumstances would make a traffic ticket unjust. But the standard of guilt is strict and clear cut.
> Crimes always require intent, the mens rea element.
LMAO “there’s no such thing as negligence” I type on my phone as my car plows through the doors of a Black Angus