Husak's primary goal is to defend a set of constraints to limit the authority of states to enact and enforce criminal offenses. In addition, Husak situates this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. This book urges the importance of this topic in the real world, while most Anglo-American legal philosophers have neglected it.

Does criminal liability require an act? -- Motive and criminal liability -- The costs to criminal theory of supposing that intentions are irrelevant to permissibility -- Transferred intent -- The nature and justifiability of nonconsummate offenses -- Strict liability, justice, and proportionality -- The sequential principle of relative culpability -- Willful ignorance, knowledge, and the equal culpability thesis : a study of the significance of the principle of legality -- Rapes without rapists : consent and reasonable mistake -- Mistake of (...) law and culpability -- On the supposed priority of justification to excuse -- Partial defenses -- The "but everybody does that!" defense -- The de minimis "defense" to criminal liability -- Why punish the deserving -- Malum prohibitum and retributivism -- Already punished enough. (shrink)

This book argues that ignorance of law should usually be a complete excuse from criminal liability. It defends this conclusion by invoking two presumptions: first, the content of criminal law should conform to morality; second, mistakes of fact and mistakes of law should be treated symmetrically.

A rational defense of the criminal law must provide a comprehensive theory of culpability. A comprehensive theory of culpability must resolve several difficult issues; in this article I will focus on only one. The general problem arises from the lack of a systematic account of relative culpability. An account of relative culpability would identify and defend a set of considerations to assess whether, why, under what circumstances, and to what extent persons who perform a criminal act with a given culpable (...) state are more or less blameworthy than persons who perform that act with a different culpable state. (shrink)

This volume collects 17 of Douglas Husak's influential essays in criminal law theory. The essays span Husak's original and provocative contributions to the central topics in the field, including the grounds of criminal liability, relative culpability, the role of defences, and the justification of punishment. The volume includes an extended introduction by the author, drawing together the themes of his work, and exploring the goals of criminal theory.

This important book was the first serious work of philosophy to address the question: Do adults have a moral right to use drugs for recreational purposes? Many critics of the 'war on drugs' denounce law enforcement as counterproductive and ineffective. Douglas Husak argues that the 'war on drugs' violates the moral rights of adults who want to use drugs for pleasure, and that criminal laws against such use are incompatible with moral rights. This is not a polemical tract (...) but a scrupulously argued work of philosophy that takes full account of all available data concerning drug use in the United States today. The author is careful to describe the properties a recreational drug would have to possess before the state would be justified in prohibiting it. Since criminal laws against the use of recreational drugs are justified neither by the harm users cause to themselves nor by the harm users cause to each other, Professor Husak concludes that such laws are, in almost all cases, unjustified. (shrink)

George P. Fletcher, Basic Concepts of Criminal Law New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, xi + 223 pp.

The prelims comprise: Introduction 1 Should I Use Drugs? Is the State Justified in Punishing Drug Users? Conclusion References Further Reading.

Do non-persons have moral rights? I will suppose this question can best be answered by inquiring whether some animals and/or environmental objects have moral rights, for if any non-persons are possessors of rights, animals and/or environmental objects are the most plausible candidates. As so interpreted, this question has received an extraordinary amount of recent attention from philosophers. Arguments have been offered and defended; rebuttals have appeared in print. Yet, so far as I am aware, no one has presented a clear (...) and accurate statement of what turns on the issue of whether non-persons have moral rights. In the absence of such a statement, philosophers are likely to be at sea in determining on which side of the controversy their initial sympathies lie. In this paper it is my central concern to help clarify what turns on the issue of whether non-persons are possessors of moral rights, rather than to argue decisively for one position or the other. (shrink)

George P. Fletcher, Basic Concepts of Criminal Law New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, xi + 223 pp.