-
4"Rights, Goods, and Democracy" by Ramon M. Lemos (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (3): 541. 1989.
-
64Killing, letting die and euthanasiaJournal of Medical Ethics 5 (4): 200-202. 1979.Medical ethicists debate whether or not the moral assessment of cases of euthanasia should depend on whether the patient is 'killed' or 'allowed to die'. The usual presupposition is that a clear distinction between killing and letting die can be drawn so that this substantive question is not begged. I contend that the categorisation of cases of instances of killing rather than as instances of letting die depends in part on a prior moral assessment of the case. Hence is it trivially rather than s…Read more
-
132Guns and drugs: Case studies on the principled limits of the criminal sanction (review)Law and Philosophy 23 (5). 2004.
-
7Drugs and RightsCambridge University Press. 1992.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 argue…Read more
-
9Richard Henson, 1925-2007Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 81 (2). 2007.
-
118Mistake of Law and CulpabilityCriminal Law and Philosophy 4 (2): 135-159. 2010.When does a defendant not deserve punishment because he is unaware that his conduct breaches a penal statute? Retributivists must radically rethink their answer to this question to do justice to our moral intuitions. I suggest that modest progress on this topic can be made by modeling our approach to ignorance of law on our familiar approach to ignorance of fact. We need to distinguish different levels of culpability in given mistakes and to differentiate what such mistakes may be about. I discu…Read more
-
An alleged act requirement in the criminal lawIn John Deigh & David Dolinko (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of the Criminal Law, Oxford University Press. 2011.
-
245In Favor of Drug DecriminalizationIn Andrew I. Cohen & Christopher H. Wellman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 22--335. 2014.
-
149The Complete Guide to Consent to Sex: Alan Wertheimer’s Consent to Sexual Relations (review)Law and Philosophy 25 (2): 267-287. 2005.
-
12Review of mark R. Reiff, Punishment, Compensation, and Law (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (2). 2006.
-
71Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal LawOup Usa. 2007.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.
-
1Jon Elster, Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction, and Human Behavior Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 20 (1): 19-21. 2000.
-
6The Function and Structure of the Substantive Criminal LawLaw and Philosophy 18 (1): 85-104. 1999.
-
87Why Criminal Law: A Question of Content? (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 2 (2): 99-122. 2008.I take it as obvious that attempts to justify the criminal law must be sensitive to matters of criminalizationâto what conduct is proscribed or permitted. I discuss three additional matters that should be addressed in order to justify the criminal law. First, we must have a rough idea of what degree of deviation is tolerable between the set of criminal laws we ought to have and the set we really have. Second, we need information about how the criminal law at any given time and place is adminis…Read more
-
26Gardner on the Philosophy of Criminal LawOxford Journal of Legal Studies 29 (1): 169-187. 2008.Offences and Defences is an outstanding collection of eleven of John Gardner's previously published papers in the philosophy of criminal law. I briefly examine his views on five central issues: his claims about basic responsibility and whether it should be construed as relational; his positions on agent neutrality; his arguments about whether moral and criminal wrongs are typically strict; his thoughts about the structure of defences, and, finally, what his account of rape reveals about the cont…Read more
-
16Convergent Ends, Divergent Means: A Response to My CriticsCriminal Justice Ethics 28 (1): 119-134. 2009.When writing Overcriminalization, I entertained a fantasy about the reaction my book might produce. I hoped that philosophers would not merely criticize my shortcomings but would join me to produce...