Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T12:19:49.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Public Wrongs and Public Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

CHAD FLANDERS
CHAD FLANDERS*
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University School of Law
*
*<cflande2@slu.edu>
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The distinction between crimes that involve wrongs in themselves and crimes that are wrong because the law makes them so has long puzzled theorists. This essay argues that the distinction, while getting at something real, is based on a mistake. That mistake is made both by those who see moral wrongness as a necessary condition for criminality and by those who believe merely making something illegal is sufficient to make it criminal. Neither is correct. Rather, what makes something a criminal wrong is that it involves a violation of a law that has been justified in terms of “public reason.”

La distinction entre les crimes qui impliquent un mal en soi et les crimes qui sont mauvais parce que la loi les désigne ainsi a longtemps intrigué les théoriciens. Le présent article soutient que cette distinction, bien qu’elle touche une différence réelle, est fondée sur une erreur. Cette erreur est commise tant par ceux qui considèrent le mal moral comme une condition nécessaire de la criminalité que par ceux qui croient que le simple fait de rendre une chose illégale suffit à la rendre criminelle. Aucune de ces positions n’est correcte. Plutôt, ce qui rend un acte criminel, c’est le fait que cet acte implique la violation d’une loi qui a été justifiée en termes de «raison publique».

Type
Special Topic: Mala in se and Mala prohibita
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 45 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bentham, Jeremy 2008 A Comment on the Commentaries and a Fragment on Government (James H. Burns, et al. Eds.). Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Chiao, Vincent Forthcoming “Two Conceptions of Criminal Law” in The New Philosophy of Criminal Law (Zach, Hoskins and Flanders, Chad W., Eds.). Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Devlin, Lord Patrick 1961 The Enforcement of Morals. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Duff, Antony 2007 Answering for Crime: Responsibility and Liability in the Criminal Law. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Duff, Antony 2002 “Crime, Prohibition, and Punishment,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 19 (2): 97–108.Google Scholar
Duff, Antony 2013 Theories of Criminal Law, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/criminal-law/.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Patrick J. 1965 “Real Crimes and Quasi-Crimes,” National Law Forum 10: 21–53.Google Scholar
Flanders, Chad W. 2014 “Can Retributivism Be Saved?,” Brigham Young University Law Review 309–362.Google Scholar
Flanders, Chad W. 2014 “Public Reason and Animal Rights” in Animal Politics/Political Animals (Schlossberg, David and Wissenburg, Marcel, Eds.). Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Green, Stuart P. 2007 Lying, Cheating and Stealing: A Moral Theory of White Collar Crime. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Stuart P. 2015 “The Conceptual Utility of Malum prohibitum .” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 51(1).Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas 1997 Leviathan (Michael Oakeshott Ed., First Touchstone ed.).Google Scholar
Husak, Douglas 2008 Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keeler v. Super. Ct. of Amador Cnty., 2 Cal.3d 619 (1970).Google Scholar
Markel, Dan 2012 “Retributive Justice and the Demands of Democratic Citizenship,” Virginia Journal of Criminal Law 1 (1): 1–134.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael S. 1993 Act and Crime. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael S. 1997 Placing Blame. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Michael S. 2009 “A Tale of Two Theories,” Criminal Justice Ethics 28: 27–48.Google Scholar
Murphy, Jeffrie 1994 “The State’s Interest in Punishment,” Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 5: 283–298.Google Scholar
Note 1930 “The Distinction between Mala Prohibita and Mala In Se in Criminal Law,” Columbia Law Review 30: 74–108.Google Scholar
People v. Melvin , 2 Wheeler C.C. 148–149 (N.Y. 1810) (quoting Co. Lit. 978, 142).Google Scholar
Rawls, John 1992 Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ristroph, Alice 2011 “Responsibility for the Criminal Law,” in Philosophical Foundations of the Criminal Law (Duff, Antony and Green, Stuart, Eds.). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tadros, Victor 2012 “Wrongness and Criminalization,” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law 157 (Marmor, Andrei, Ed.). Routledge.Google Scholar
Thorburn, Malcom 2011 “Constitutionalism and the Limits of the Criminal Law,” in The Structures of the Criminal Law 96 (Duff, Anthony et al., Eds.). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, , Travis, Nancy 1981 “ Mala In Se: A Disappearing Doctrine?,” Criminology 19: 131–143.Google Scholar