Competence, Attributability, and Blame

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-164
Author(s):  
Jeanette Kennett
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Reactive Attitudes ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

This chapter takes up the question of whether psychopaths can legitimately be held morally accountable, and the resolution of these issues developed is subtle. First it argues that psychopaths are not accountable for their actions in the sense required for moral blameworthiness. Second, it argues that psychopaths’ actions are not attributable to them in the way that would make them fitting targets of the criminal law. The assertion that attributability is not a face of responsibility is explored and justified. The chapter, while respecting Watson and authors who have followed him in the enquiry into the crucially important attributability ‘face’ of responsibility, also offers a somewhat revisionary account of the ethical significance of attributability and the role of the reactive attitudes in social and moral life.

Seeking Reconciliation

2020 ◽  
pp. 88-124
Author(s):  
Arzoo Osanloo
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Cycle Of Violence ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Legitimate Violence ◽  
Sense Of Power ◽  
The Way

This chapter studies the operations of the Iranian criminal law and analyzes how the procedural administration of the law animates the shariʻa. Iranian criminal laws provide many avenues for victims to forgo retributive sanctioning. But preserving the right of retribution serves several purposes: maintaining the sovereign's monopoly on legitimate violence, giving victims a sense of power, and halting the cycle of violence. The way Iran achieves this comprises an interesting balancing act between maintaining the monopoly over legitimate violence and granting individual victims the right of retribution, which its leaders believe, through their interpretation of the shariʻa, cannot be appropriated by the sovereign. Since the law categorizes intentional murder as qisas and leaves judges with no discretion in sentencing, the judges may use their considerable influence to pressure the family to forgo retribution. The chapter then considers the role of judges and examines how the laws (substantive and procedural) shape their reasoning and discretion in both sentencing and encouraging forbearance.

Mental Incapacity Doctrines in Criminal Law

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlie Loughnan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Reasonable Person ◽  
Evaluative Inquiry ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

The way in which mental incapacity in criminal law has been approached to date has not produced a thorough understanding of it. The idea that mental incapacity's chief relevance in criminal law is as a basis for exculpation dominates the scholarship—both doctrinal and philosophical—on mental incapacity. In an effort to advance scholarly understanding of this area of criminal law, this article provides a reconstruction of the legal terrain concerned with mental incapacity—organized as mental incapacity doctrines, a subset of which is exculpatory. In my reconstruction, what unites the relevant aspects of the law is that each doctrine imagines an abnormal subject of the law, and where the doctrines are exculpatory, the evaluative inquiry is not indexed to the reasonable person. This reconstruction of mental incapacity in criminal law—as mental incapacity doctrines—cuts across existing categorizations of this terrain and, as such, offers a rethinking of this area of the criminal law. This reconstruction permits a reconceptualization of the role of mental incapacity in criminal law: it becomes clear that mental incapacity is the basis for doctrines which perform a multiplicity of roles—inculpation, imputation, and a procedural role—beyond exculpation.

The idea of the self in the evolution of Hume’s account of the passions

2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (S1) ◽  
pp. 171-182
Author(s):  
Jane McIntyre
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
The Way

Terence Penelhum has written extensively about the role of the idea of the self in Hume's account of the emotional and moral life of persons. Penelhum fails to notice, however, a change that takes place in the way that the idea of the self functions in Hume's account of the passions as that account evolved after the Treatise. This paper charts part of that evolution, and reflects on its significance for Hume's moral psychology.

The Role of the Criminal Procedure Rules

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Sprack ◽  
Michael Engelhardt–Sprack
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Clear Description ◽  
The Way

The procedural framework for the criminal courts is governed by various sets of rules. Of course, these rules do not always provide a clear description of what actually happens on the ground. In order to get an overall picture of the workings of the courts in practice, it is necessary to have some idea of the context in which the rules operate, the way in which they interact with the underlying principles of substantive criminal law and evidence, and the conventions which are adopted by the judges and practitioners who implement them. This book is an attempt to provide that context. But the rules themselves play an important part in setting out the duties of the parties and the court in relation to the case and the various transactions which it involves. They set deadlines, prescribe methods of performing tasks, and lay down the powers of the courts to deal with a variety of situations. They constitute the bricks with which the edifice of criminal procedure is constructed.

The Role of the Russian Constitutional Court in Achieving Certainty of the Criminal Law Prohibition

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Z. А. Magomadova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Judicial Practice ◽  
Absolute Certainty ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Legal Meaning ◽  
The Way

The article explores the activities of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation as a means of achieving certainty of the criminal law prohibition. Three approaches to «reduce» uncertainty are considered (wherein, the impossibility to reach absolute certainty is proclaimed). The author proposes to distinguish three such approaches enforced by the Constitutional Court: 1) recognize the contested provision as compliant with the Constitution of the Russian Federation (through a «refusal» ruling); 2) to indicate the constitutionality of the norm, while revealing its obligatory legal meaning (thus, correcting not the rule itself, but the practice of its application); 3) to decide the unconstitutionality of the normative act examined in the process of constitutional production in whole or in part. It is argued that the way to «reduce» uncertainty, by adjusting judicial practice, cannot be considered efficient with the preservation of an uncertain norm defective in its core (the criminalization of the act was made unreasonably).

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR ALPHABET-SWITCHING IN THE WORKS OF CICERO: COMMON NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Reliable Transmission ◽  
Accurate Record ◽  
The Way

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.

The adaptation of design thinking in auditing

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda MEIJER-WASSENAAR ◽  
Diny VAN EST
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
Design Framework ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

How can a supreme audit institution (SAI) use design thinking in auditing? SAIs audit the way taxpayers’ money is collected and spent. Adding design thinking to their activities is not to be taken lightly. SAIs independently check whether public organizations have done the right things in the right way, but the organizations might not be willing to act upon a SAI’s recommendations. Can you imagine the role of design in audits? In this paper we share our experiences of some design approaches in the work of one SAI: the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA). Design thinking needs to be adapted (Dorst, 2015a) before it can be used by SAIs such as the NCA in order to reflect their independent, autonomous status. To dive deeper into design thinking, Buchanan’s design framework (2015) and different ways of reasoning (Dorst, 2015b) are used to explore how design thinking can be adapted for audits.

Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

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