MBE Rules · Criminal Law
Rape / sexual assault
The rule
Common law: unlawful carnal knowledge of a woman, not one's wife, by force or threat of force and without consent. Modern statutes are gender-neutral, cover any sexual penetration, abolish the marital exemption, and criminalize intercourse where consent is absent or vitiated by incapacity, unconsciousness, or fraud in the factum.
In plain English
Modern rape law focuses on lack of consent rather than physical resistance. Consent obtained by force, threat, or exploitation of incapacity is no consent.
The trap
Common-law rape was a general-intent crime; mistake of fact as to consent must be reasonable, not merely honest.
Drill this rule until it can't fail you.
Vrenberg generates unlimited questions on this exact rule, tracks your mastery of it, and brings it back until it sticks.