  These remarks suggest an alternative to the communitarian view. According to the alternative, the secondary duties of concern in civil and criminal proceedings are typically one and the same. The positive case for criminal law’s involvement is not that it discharges duties of interest to the criminal law alone, but that it enables duties of general interest to be discharged less imperfectly than they otherwise would be—than they would be if the criminal law took no interest in them. Call this the imperfectionist view. What is distinctive of criminal law, on this view, is not its function but its mode of functioning: the manner in which it fulfills functions shared with other bodies of law.