•  263
    Four points about drug decriminalization
    Criminal Justice Ethics 22 (1): 21-29. 2003.
  •  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.
  •  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
  •  164
    Why punish the deserving?
    Noûs 26 (4): 447-464. 1992.
  •  144
    Paternalism and autonomy
    Philosophy and Public Affairs 10 (1): 27-46. 1981.
  •  123
    The Legalization of Drugs
    Cambridge University Press. 2005.
    In the United States today, the use or possession of many drugs is a criminal offense. Can these criminal laws be justified? What are the best reasons to punish or not to punish drug users? These are the fundamental issues debated in this book by two prominent philosophers of law. Douglas Husak argues in favor of drug decriminalization, by clarifying the meaning of crucial terms, such as legalize, decriminalize, and drugs; and by identifying the standards by which alternative drug policies shoul…Read more
  •  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
  •  95
    Why There Are No Human Rights
    Social Theory and Practice 10 (2): 125-141. 1984.
  •  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
  •  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
  •  89
    Intoxication and Culpability
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 6 (3): 363-379. 2012.
    I tackle the difficult problem of specifying how voluntary intoxication affects criminal culpability generally and recklessness in particular. I contend that the problem need not be conceptualized as an instance of actio libera in causa, namely the situation in which persons do something at t1 to culpably create the conditions of their own defense at t2. Instead, I argue that we need only consider intoxicated defendants at t2 in order to justify their punishment. In the course of defending my vi…Read more
  •  86
    Already Punished Enough
    Philosophical Topics 18 (1): 79-99. 1990.
  •  84
    Omissions, causation and liability
    Philosophical Quarterly 30 (121): 318-326. 1980.
  •  82
    Legal rights: How useful is hohfeldian analysis?
    with Stephen D. Hudson
    Philosophical Studies 37 (1). 1980.
  •  76
    Date Rape, Social Convention, and Reasonable Mistakes
    with George C. Thomas I. I. I.
    Law and Philosophy 11 (1/2). 1992.
  •  76
    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
  •  74
  •  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
  •  71
    [Book review] drugs and rights (review)
    Criminal Justice Ethics 14 (1): 63-72. 1995.
    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
  •  70
    I attempt to describe the several costs that criminal theory would be forced to pay by adopting the view (currently fashionable among moral philosophers) that the intentions of the agent are irrelevant to determinations of whether his actions are permissible (or criminal)
  •  69
    Thirty Years of Law and Philosophy
    Law and Philosophy 30 (2): 141-142. 2011.
  •  68
  •  67
    The Criminal Law as Last Resort
    Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 24 (2): 207-235. 2004.
    In this article I examine one condition a minimalist theory of criminalization might contain: the criminal law should be used only as a last resort. I discuss how this principle should be interpreted and the reasons we have to accept it. I conclude that a theory of criminalization should probably include the (appropriately construed) last resort principle. But this conclusion will prove disappointing to those who hope to employ this principle to bring about fundamental reform in the substantive …Read more