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78Review essay / justice, mercy, and forgivenessCriminal Justice Ethics 9 (2): 51-63. 1990.Jeffrie G Murphy & Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988, 194 pp. Kathleen Dean Moore, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 271 pp
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230Blame, moral standing and the legitimacy of the criminal trialRatio 23 (2): 123-140. 2010.I begin by discussing the ways in which a would-be blamer's own prior conduct towards the person he seeks to blame can undermine his standing to blame her. This provides the basis for an examination of a particular kind of 'bar to trial' in the criminal law – of ways in which a state or a polity's right to put a defendant on trial can be undermined by the prior misconduct of the state or its officials. The examination of this often neglected legal phenomenon illuminates some central features of …Read more
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5Realism and Imagination in Ethics By Sabina Lovibond Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983,238 pp., £15.00 (review)Philosophy 59 (230): 541-542. 1984.
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74The Intrusion of MercyOhio State Journal of Criminal Law 4 361-87. 2007.On the basis of a communicative theory of criminal punishment, I show how mercy has a significant but limited role to play in the criminal law—in particular (although not only) in criminal sentencing. Mercy involves an intrusion into the realm of criminal law of values and concerns that are not themselves part of the perspective of criminal law: a merciful sentencer acts beyond the limits of her legal role, on the basis of moral considerations that conflict with the demands of penal justice. Som…Read more
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204Guiding Commitments and Criminal Liability for AttemptsCriminal Law and Philosophy 6 (3): 411-427. 2012.A critical discussion of Gideon Yaffe's "guiding commitment" account of attempts, with special reference to attempts in the criminal law.
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19Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2011.25 leading contemporary theorists of criminal law tackle a range of foundational issues about the proper aims and structure of the criminal law in a liberal democracy. The challenges facing criminal law are many. There are crises of over-criminalization and over-imprisonment; penal policy has become so politicized that it is difficult to find any clear consensus on what aims the criminal law can properly serve; governments seeking to protect their citizens in the face of a range of perceived thr…Read more
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PunishmentIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The Oxford handbook of practical ethics, Oxford University Press. 2003.
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16Lawrence A. Blum, "Friendship, Altruism and Morality" (review)Philosophical Quarterly 32 (27): 181. 1982.
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13What kind of responsibility must criminal law presuppose?In Richard Swinburne (ed.), Free Will and Modern Science, Oup/british Academy. 2011.This chapter argues that the kind of responsibility that we must have, if the enterprise of criminal law and punishment is to be consistent with the demands of justice, is something much more modest, much less metaphysically ambitious, than the ‘ultimate’ responsibility that Strawson so persuasively denies in Chapter 8. If we are to be clear about the kind of responsibility that is relevant to criminal law, we must first be clear about the criminal law itself — about the kind of enterprise that …Read more
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47Trials and PunishmentsCambridge University Press. 1986.How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? Traditional attempts to justify punishment as a deterrent or as retribution fail, but Duff suggests that punishment can be understood as a communicative attempt to bring a wrong-doer to repent her crime. This account is supported by discussions of moral blame, of penance, of the nature of the law's demands, and of th…Read more
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40Relational Reasons and the Criminal LawIn B. Leiter & L. Green (eds.), Oxford Studies in Legal Philosophy, vol. 2, Oxford Up. pp. 175-208. 2013.First paragraph: Some reasons for action are relational. I have a relational reason to Φ when I have reason to Φ in virtue of a relationship in which I stand, or a role that I fill; absent that relationship or that role I would not have that reason to Φ ; others who do not stand in that relationship or fill that role do not have that reason to Φ . I have a relational reason to feed this child -- that he is my child: absent that parental relationship, I might still have a reason to feed him, as m…Read more
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62Criminal Responsibility and the Emotions: If Fear and Anger Can Exculpate, Why Not Compassion?Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (2): 189-220. 2015.The article offers an Aristotelian analysis of emotion-based defences in criminal law: someone who commits an offence is entitled to an excuse if she was motivated by a justifiably aroused and strongly felt emotion that gave her good reason to commit the offence and that might have destabilised the practical rationality even of a ‘reasonable’ person. This analysis captures the logical structure of duress and provocation as excuses—and also shows why provocation is controversial as even a partial…Read more
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378Punishment, Communication, and CommunityOup Usa. 2001.Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theo…Read more
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52MercyIn John Deigh & David Dolinko (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of the Criminal Law, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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10Action and Criminal ResponsibilityIn O'Connor & C. Sandis (eds.), Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Blackwell. pp. 331-7. 2010.
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40The virtues and vices of virtue jurisprudenceIn Timothy Chappell (ed.), Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2006.
Areas of Specialization
Criminal Law |
Philosophy of Law, Miscellaneous |