Where this court once stood firm, today it wilts. - Neil Gorsuch

In contrast to unintended consequences, intended acts are always within our control, subjects of our free will and choice. Because we can always choose to refrain from doing intentional harm to others- because our purposeful actions are within our control- our intentional choices necessarily reveal more about our character and individuality than any unintended side effect ever can. To disregard whether or not an act is intended would be, thus, in a very real way to disregard the role of free will in the world- leaving, for example, those who fail to assist charities that feed the hungry open to censure and penalties as those who would starve such persons.
Precisely to avoid such acts of injustice in implicit recognition of commonsense (nontheologic) moral power of the double effect insight, secular American criminal law has long calibrated different levels of responsibility and punishment based on different levels of mens rea. The purposeful killer is considered for lethal injection while the individual who kills in self-defense, foreseeing death as a consequence but intending only to stop the aggression, may receive no punishment at all. The driver who speeds with reckless disregard for the consequences to others but without any intent to harm the darting child may receive jail time but is often treated far differently from the depraved killer who sets out witha purposeful plan to murder the child. The one who disregards the hungry and homeless may not command respect and admiration, but he or she is not subjected to the same penalties as one who deliberately harms such persons.

If you were to sit down to read through all of our criminal laws and regulations- or at least flip through them- you would find plenty of surprises, too. You would learn, for example, that it's a federal crime to "injure[]" a government-owned lamp in Washington, D.C., consult with a known pirate, or advertise wine by suggesting its intoxicating qualities. The truth is, we now have so many federal criminal laws covering so many things that one scholar suggests that "there is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cnanot be indicted for some federal crime." In case you think that's an exaggeration, he adds: "That is not an exaggeration."
It's a state of affairs that sometimes makes it hard not to wonder how far we have left to travel to a world described by Lavrentiy Beria, the chief of Joseph Stalin's secret police, who was reputed to have bragged, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Don't think it can happen here? Ask John Yates, who was convicted for an offense he'd probably never heard of, one that few would have imagined would apply to him, and one that robbed him and his family of the life they cherished.

What do I mean by courage? Well, let's start with what I don't mean. I don't mean blind bullheadedness or rudeness or incivility. We have all too much of those things in our culture and in our profession. They are pretenders of courage, not the real thing. For true courage will often require you to admit a mistake, hold your tongue, or wait to fight another day. When it requires you to stand up against the powers arrayed around you, it will also require you to do so with not just respect but affection for your fellow citizen. What I mean by courage is what Atticus Finch meant by it in To Kill a Mockingbird. You may remember that Finch defended an African-American man wrongly accused of raping a white woman in Alabama during the Great Depression- and that in taking on the representation he faced criticism and threats from his friends and community. As he told his daughter in the book: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."