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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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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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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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52MercyIn John Deigh & David Dolinko (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of the Criminal Law, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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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.
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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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41Responsibility and liability in criminal lawIn Matthew H. Kramer (ed.), The Legacy of H.L.A. Hart: Legal, Political, and Moral Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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37Philosophy and 'the life of the law'Journal of Applied Philosophy 26 (3): 245-258. 2009.abstract Focusing on the criminal law, I discuss three ways in which analytical philosophers might contribute to the development or health of the law (and of legal theory). The first is as humble under-labourers, who seek only to clarify legal rules and doctrines, but not to criticise them. This modest conception of the role of philosophy, however, proves to be untenable: clarification must become rational reconstruction — an attempt to make rational sense of the law; and rational reconstruction…Read more
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76Excuses, moral and legal: a comment on Marcia Baron’s ‘excuses, excuses’Criminal Law and Philosophy 1 (1): 49-55. 2007.Marcia Baron has offered an illuminating and fruitful discussion of extra-legal excuses. What is particularly useful, and particularly important, is her focus on our excusatory practices—on the ways and contexts in which we make, offer, accept, bestow and reject excuses: if we are to reach an adequate understanding of excuses, their implications and their grounds, we must attend to the roles that they can play in our human activities and relationships—and to the complexities and particularities …Read more
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96Crime, prohibition, and punishmentJournal of Applied Philosophy 19 (2). 2002.Nigel Walker’s first principle of criminalization declares that ‘Prohibitions should not be included in the criminal law for the sole purpose of ensuring that breaches of them are visited with retributive punishment’. I argue that we should reject this principle, for ‘mala prohibita’ as well as for ‘mala in se’: conduct should be criminalized in order to ensure (as far as we reasonably can) that those who engage in it receive retributive punishment. In the course of the argument, I show why we s…Read more
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27Whose Luck is it Anyway?In Cunningham (ed.), Criminal Liability for Non-Aggressive Death, Ashgate. pp. 61-78. 2008.First paragraph: Dangerous driving attracts a maximum penalty of a heavy fine, or in the most serious cases up to six months’ imprisonment; but if it causes death, the maximum penalty is fourteen years’ imprisonment. Careless driving attracts a maximum penalty of a level 4 fine; driving whilst under the influence of drink or drugs attracts a maximum penalty of a level 5 fine and/or up to six months’ imprisonment: but if someone causes death by careless driving when under the influence of drink o…Read more
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89Absolute Principles and Double EffectAnalysis 36 (2). 1976.I argue that hanink's account of the principle of double effect ("some light on double effect," "analysis", volume 35, number 5) is inadequate, and rests on the mistaken assumption that the criteria for distinguishing acts from each other, intention from foresight, acting from refraining, can be specified independently of any moral perspective. i try to indicate the way to a better understanding of these distinctions, and the essential features of the kind of absolutist morality which invokes th…Read more
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193Towards a theory of criminal law?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84 (1): 1-28. 2010.After an initial discussion (§i) of what a theory of criminal law might amount to, I sketch (§ii) the proper aims of a liberal, republican criminal law, and discuss (§§iii–iv) two central features of such a criminal law: that it deals with public wrongs, and provides for those who perpetrate such wrongs to be called to public account. §v explains why a liberal republic should maintain such a system of criminal law, and §vi tackles the issue of criminalization—of how we should determine the prope…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Criminal Law |
Philosophy of Law, Miscellaneous |