•  111
    Mistake of Law and Culpability
    Criminal 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
  •  239
    In Favor of Drug Decriminalization
    In Andrew I. Cohen & Christopher H. Wellman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 22--335. 2014.
  •  12
    Review of mark R. Reiff, Punishment, Compensation, and Law (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (2). 2006.
  •  68
  •  6
    Ethics in context
    with James Mccloskey, Michael Goldman, and Sidney Gendin
    Criminal Justice Ethics 8 (1). 1989.
  •  21
    Continuity and Change
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 7 (1): 1-1. 2013.
  •  4
    Property: Cases, Concepts, Critiques (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 8 (2): 163-165. 1985.
  •  65
    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.
  •  5
  •  77
    Why 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 criminalization—to 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
  •  30
  •  15
    Convergent Ends, Divergent Means: A Response to My Critics
    Criminal 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...
  •  26
    Gardner on the Philosophy of Criminal Law
    Oxford 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
  •  16
    Drug legalization
    In Rosamond Rhodes, Leslie Francis & Anita Silvers (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics, Blackwell. 2007.
    The prelims comprise: Introduction 1 Should I Use Drugs? Is the State Justified in Punishing Drug Users? Conclusion References Further Reading.
  •  73
    Retributivism In Extremis
    Law and Philosophy 32 (1): 3-31. 2013.
    I defend two objections to Tadros’s views on punishment. First, I allege that his criticisms of retributivism are persuasive only against extreme versions that provide no justificatory place for instrumentalist objectives. His attack fails against a version of retributivism that recognizes a chasm between what offenders deserve and the allthings-considered permissibility of treating offenders as they deserve. Second, I critique Tadros’s duty view – his alternative theory of punishment. Inter ali…Read more
  •  90
    Why Punish Attempts at All? Yaffe on 'The Transfer Principle'
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 6 (3): 399-410. 2012.
    Gideon Yaffe is to be commended for beginning his exhaustive treatment by asking a surprisingly difficult question: Why punish attempts at all? He addresses this inquiry in the context of defending (what he calls) the transfer principle: “If a particular form of conduct is legitimately criminalized, then the attempt to engage in that form of conduct is also legitimately criminalized.” I begin by expressing a few reservations about the transfer principle itself. But my main point is that we are j…Read more
  •  3
    Book Review (review)
    Law and Philosophy 29 (1): 101-119. 2009.
  •  144
    Paternalism and autonomy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1): 27-46. 1981.
  •  94
    The philosophy of criminal law: selected essays
    Oxford University Press. 2010.
    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 …Read more
  •  165
    Negligence, Belief, Blame and Criminal Liability: The Special Case of Forgetting
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 5 (2): 199-218. 2011.
    Commentators seemingly agree about what negligence is—and how it is contrasted from recklessness. They also appear to concur about whether particular examples (both real and hypothetical) portray negligence. I am less confident about each of these matters. I explore the distinction between recklessness and negligence by examining a type of case that has generated a good deal of critical discussion: those in which a defendant forgets that he has created a substantial and unjustifiable risk of har…Read more
  •  17
    George P. Fletcher, Basic Concepts of Criminal Law New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, xi + 223 pp
  •  40
    Ignorance of Law: A Philosophical Inquiry
    Oxford University Press USA. 2016.
    This book argues that ignorance of law should usually be a complete excuse from criminal liability. It defends this conclusion by invoking two presumptions: first, the content of criminal law should conform to morality; second, mistakes of fact and mistakes of law should be treated symmetrically.