| Sumario: | The writer presents a new code-based, comparative, and comprehensive program for reforming U.S. penal law. He describes a general program for reforming all areas of the discipline, including teaching, scholarship, and public service; and he demonstrates how the program might be put to use. He outlines a new, integrative approach to the analysis of American penal law, paying particular attention to substantive criminal law. Based on this code-based, comparative, and comprehensive approach, he then sets out the plans for a new type of penal law resource that draws on the scope, flexibility, and interconnectedness of the notion of a web to capture the enormous breadth and complexity of modern penal law, while at the same time exposing its potential for internal and external integration—its essential webness. He contends that as a publicly accessible resource, a penal law web would enable to long-term legitimation of U.S. penal law by cutting through the layers of officials whose expert knowledge threatens to insulate the penal law from the constant public critical analysis it must undergo to achieve and retain legitimacy.
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