Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov

Jurisprudential debate about the grounds of law often focuses on the status of morality. Given the undoubted fact of judicial engagement with morality in legal reasoning, the key question is whether morality legitimately counts as a ground of law. This article seeks to challenge the special status accorded to morality in debates about the grounds of law. The claim I seek to advance is that very often judicial engagement with morality is not different in kind to judicial engagement with other diverse objects of legal reasoning. What the comparison tends to show is that instances of “moral reasoning” in law do not obviously challenge our account of the grounds of law. Rather these instances can be viewed as central case examples of legal reasoning. Conventional grounds of law are left untouched

Intention is at the heart of criminal law. If it is not the mens rea requirement found most often in offences, it is still the standard against which other grades of fault tend relatively to be judged. It has generated much controversy, as the crucial question, “Did the defendant intend X?” is resistant to clear answers. This paper argues that intention-questions are difficult because intention is not the thing law takes it to be: Importantly, contrary to law's assumptions, it is neither a state of mind nor is it connected in an exclusive manner to the reasons for which we act.

An investigation of criminal attempts unearths some of the most fundamental, intriguing and perplexing questions about criminal law and its place in human action. When does attempting begin? What is the relationship between attempting and intending? Do we always attempt the possible and, if so, possible to whom? Does attempting involve action and does action involve attempting? Is my attempt fixed by me or can another perspective reveal what it is? How 'much' action is needed for an attempt, how 'much' intention is needed and can these matters be decided categorically? Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov's answers to these questions will interest criminal law theorists, philosophers and lawyers or law reformers, who encounter the mixed practical and philosophical phenomenon of attempting. Inspired by G. E. M. Anscombe's philosophy, Part I examines attempting generally and its relationship with intention, action subjectivity, and possibility. From the conclusions reached, Part II proposes a specific theory of criminal attempts.

Law regulates human behaviour, a phenomenon about which neuroscience has much to say. Neuroscience can tell us whether a defendant suffers from a brain abnormality, or injury and it can correlate these neural deficits with criminal offending. Using fMRI and other technologies it might indicate whether a witness is telling lies or the truth. It can further propose neuro-interventions to 'change' the brains of offenders and so to reduce their propensity to offend. And, it can make suggestions about whether a defendant knows or merely suspects a prohibited state of affairs; so, drawing distinctions among the mental states that are central to legal responsibility. Each of these matters has philosophical import; is a neurological 'deficit' inculpatory or exculpatory; what is the proper role for law if the mind is no more than the brain; is lying really a brain state and can neuroscience really 'read' the brain? In this edited collection, leading contributors to the field provide new insights on these matters, bringing to light the great challenges that arise when disciplinary boundaries merge.

In his account of adjudication, Ronald Dworkin makes the case that judicial engagement with morality is a necessary feature of legal practice and so of law itself. This paper examines the nature and implications of this claim. It argues that Dworkin is concerned with a form of engagement between law and morality that is insufficient to make morality count as part of law in virtue of it and that the sort of engagement with morality that Dworkin identifies turns out to support only the notion that judicial acts have moral meaning or import of some sort. Dworkin’s key interpretive claim that adjudication entails offering a positive moral justification for the practice of law is undermined by the type of moral engagement he properly identifies

The relationship between possibility / impossibility and attempts is complex. Accounts of the relationship are often marked by a confusion that serves to distort our understanding of the nature of attempts as such. It will be argued below that impossibility is irrelevant to an understanding of attempts. This is not just to say that impossibility should not affect our view of how blameworthy certain defendants are. It is rather to say that the ‘impossibility’ referred to in the context of attempts is just not aboutattempts at all. In contrast, possibility is relevant to an understanding of attempts but its relevance is found to be universal and no normative distinctions among attempts can be made on the basis of possibility. If it can be shown that impossibility is a concept that does not belongtoattempts then it follows that attempts which are treated as different to ‘central cases’ of attempts in virtue of impossibility either, are not different at all or, are different for reasons other than impossibility. If some attempts belong to category then it may be considered that the equal blame that is ordinarily taken to survive impossibility, does not survive these other reasons