Online research in philosophy

This is a study of possession offences, with the focus on those intended to penalise the risk of a serious harm. Offences of this kind are examined in the light of basic doctrines of the criminal law, and in the light of the proper limits of endangerment offences. They are found wanting in both respects, and are also found to pose particular sentencing problems. The conclusion is that many risk-based possession offences are unfair, save those that require proof of a further intent or those aimed at a failure properly to safeguard a dangerous object.

The modern definitions of the inchoate offences are well known in the criminal law since the Middle Ages both in European-Continent legal systems and in the English Common Law. They were mostly developed by the case-laws of the Star Chamber Court, which was abolished in 1640. The inchoate offences include three basic offences: Attempt, Conspiracy and Solicitation, but different legal systems defined some other offences as inchoate, such as the Aider and Abettor in Britain after the full validation of the Serious Crimes Act, 2007, c.27, s.44. In this paper it is argued, that there is a very intensive interaction between the fight against terrorism and inchoate offences. The fight against terrorism effects the definition of inchoate offences, and inchoate offences are used as a major instrument of criminal law in the legal fight against terrorism.

The present volume draws together original and significant essays from a number of leading authorities which identify areas of the modern criminal law where there are significant conceptual difficulties. The project developed from a series of seminars in Cambridge University, in which leading Anglo-American philosophers, criminal lawyers and legal theorists explored subjects such as attempts, intention, justification, excuses, coercion, complicity, drug-dealing and criminal harm.

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.

This paper, originally written for a conference on criminal law in times of emergency, considers the implications of the ‘German Airliner case’ for criminal law theory. In that case, the German constitutional court struck down as unconstitutional a law empowering state officials to order the shooting down of a hijacked plane on the grounds that the state could not order the killing of innocent civilians. Some have argued that despite this ruling, individual officials should still be entitled to claim a criminal law justification defence. I argue that the nature of justification defences necessarily ties them to the powers of the state to engage in such activity. I also argue that both the constitutional decision and its criminal law implications are salutary.

The paper begins with the plausible view that criminal responsibility should track moral responsibility, and explains its plausibility. A necessary distinction is then drawn between liability and answerability as two dimensions of responsibility, and is shown to underpin the distinction in criminal law between offences and defences. This enables us to distinguish strict liability from strict answerability, and to see that whilst strict criminal liability seems inconsistent with the principle that criminal responsibility should track moral responsibility, strict criminal answerability is not. We must ask, therefore, whether, when and why strict criminal responsibility is unacceptable.

This is a review essay of Gardner, John. 2007, Offences and Defences: Selected Essays in the Philosophy of Criminal Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 288 pp.