Abstract
This Article concerns how legislatures in America are stanching development of the criminal intent to commit genocide. Lawmakers have taken aim at genocide, not through the barrel of a gun, but, rather, by imbuing schoolchildren with values and psychological attributes that gradually counteract development of a génocidaire’s mens rea. Of course, sans mens rea, sans perpetration of this, the “crime of crimes.”
The counteractant process is the result of joining a substantively targeted pedagogy with the force of law so as to create state genocide-education mandate statutes. There has been a certain prescience in this. Accumulating expert opinion, studies, and surveys adventitiously show that the statutes’ authors are on the right track: genocide education is indeed effective in producing antigenocidal dispositions, provided that the laws are competently implemented.
It is, therefore, a good thing that genocide-education mandate statutes are being enacted at an increased rate. The proliferation may be a reaction both to the endless occurrence of mass atrocities, including genocides, around the world and to the recent international upsurge in politically far-right governments espousing bigotry, hatred, and intolerance towards the other.
Recommended Citation
Bitensky, Susan H.
(2025)
"Legislatively Inhibiting Children's Development of the Mens Rea to Commit Genocide During Adulthood,"
University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy: Vol. 35:
Iss.
3, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jlpp/vol35/iss3/2