ASHE SCHOW LOOKS AT efforts to make “Yes Means Yes” part of the Model Penal Code, so that it will apply everywhere, not just on college campuses.

The American Law Institute was founded in 1923 “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work,” according to its charter. It is a consequential organization. The Institute’s Model Penal Code of 1962 was adopted almost entirely in New Jersey, New York and Oregon, with nearly two-thirds of the states using at least some portion of it.

So, Schulhofer and Murphy want to change an important document.

The two presented their first draft of a new model penal code for sexual offenses to the Institute’s 2014 annual meeting. Members discussed the draft vigorously. Because the discussion ran out of time, the draft was referred back to Schulhofer and Murphy for reworking.

They presented a reworked draft at ALI’s 2015 annual meeting in Washington, D.C. It was dated April 28, just three weeks before the meeting on May 19. Schulhofer and Murphy were criticized for providing the draft so close to the meeting, giving lawyers limited time to read and analyze its 250 pages. But the “reworked” draft is actually just a reorganized version of the 2014 draft, with hardly any changes.

This made it easy for opponents to produce an opposition letter with 22 co-signers to pick the document apart. It also showed that Schulhofer and Murphy did not allow the feedback received in 2014 to affect their views.

Opponents say the draft would further burden an already over-criminalized and over-incarcerated American public.

Indeed. Less academic tinkering with people’s sex-lives is in order, not more.