Justifications and Excuses

""Abstract: In studies with questionnaires the main reason reported for trying drugs is the curiosity. However, curiosity does not have an unambiguous meaning. The word itself (in English as well as in Hungarian) has more, sometimes contradictory meanings.
In my own research I examined the usage of the term curiosity among injecting and non-injecting drug users in qualitative interviews, conducted in Hungary. I encountered different functions of curiosity: in accounts it appeared as an excuse or, less frequently, as justification of drug use behaviour.
Contrary to dominant contemporary drug policy literature, drug users themselves rarely used curiosity as the cause of their drug use in the context of its risk or dangers. The results of this
research on curiosity demonstrate that the normalisation of drug use, which is already in progress in Western countries, has not yet taken place in Hungary.""

This edited collection explores the moral and social dimensions of ignorance. The volume addresses such issues as the relation between ignorance and deception, ignorance as a moral excuse, ignorance as a legal excuse, and the relation between ignorance and moral character. Together, these topics will add depth and insight into the question of what are the moral and social relevance, value, and role of ignorance. It will be the first in its kind in having as its focus exactly those problems associated with this dimension. It will draw together twelve commissioned chapters written by leading philosophers in the field.

Published with Routledge

List of Contributors: Larry Alexander; Marcia Baron; Julia Driver; Don Fallis; Alex Guerrero; Sven Ove Hansson; Elinor Mason; Seumas Miller; Martin Peterson; Carolina Sartorio; Holly Smith; Michael Zimmermann

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

El artículo trae al ámbito jurídico-penal la tradicional discusión de la metodología jurídica sobre la conexión entre la prohibición de analogía y las regulaciones excepcionales. En primer lugar, se cuestiona la idea fuertemente asentada en la metodología jurídica tradicional, según la cuál las regulaciones de excepción no pueden ser extendidas por analogía en ningún caso. En segundo lugar, se esboza un concepto de regulación excepcional en el Derecho penal, tomando como referente el sistema de eximentes y su desarrollo histórico en la dogmática.

Con objeto de establecer las bases de un castigo penal justo, H.L.A. Hart propone una visión alternativa a las versiones tradicionales. El planteamiento de Hart muestra que los enfoques principales no han superado problemas de incuestionable importancia: la justificación moral del castigo penal y su aplicación justa. En este sentido, el trabajo de Hart se sitúa entre el consecuencialismo y el retribucionismo. De esta manera, si un castigo está justificado debe tener buenas consecuencias para la sociedad castigando sólo a quien lo merece. Finalmente, la propuesta de Hart conectará con su concepción del Derecho dando a los individuos las capacidades de guiar su propia vida con previsión, confianza, seguridad y libertad.

El presente ensayo tiene por finalidad mostrar los puntos más relevantes de la filosofía del lenguaje del filósofo oxoniense, John Langshaw Austin. Para este objetivo se pasará revista a sus principales contribuciones metodológicas, a saber: la distinción entre enunciados constatativos y realizativos, los hechos en la realidad (infortunios; cosas y palabras) y finalmente, los actos de habla, esto son, la descripción de cómo hacer cosas con palabras y cómo hacer que hayan cosas con palabras orientadas a un fin. Sobre el último punto cabe hacer el énfasis, así también de la recopilación de conferencias de 1962, How to do things with words.

While we've said more than we need to say about the distinction between justification and knowledge, epistemologists have said little about the distinction between justification and excuse. The aim of this paper is to offer some general suggestions about how this distinction should be drawn, why we should distinguish justification from rationality, and how this all sheds light on Cohen's new evil demon objection to externalism.  I shall argue that externalists have nothing to fear from the demon for there's nothing wrong with saying that the deceived subject's beliefs are excused, not justified.  I shall also argue that there's something wrong with Cohen's methodology. The intuitions that he hopes to elicit cannot have the significance he takes them to.  A norm might be a genuine norm even if it's not demon-proofed. (No norm could be demon-proofed!)

Sykes and Matza’s neutralization theory, though a popular framework for
understanding deviant behavior, remains badly underdeveloped in the criminological
literature. In particular, few attempts have been made to connect it to narrative and
sociocognitive research in psychology and related fields. From the perspective of this
wider context, it appears that one reason neutralization theory has received only mixed
empirical support is that it has been understood as a theory of criminal etiology. This
makes little sense (how can one neutralize something before they have done it?).
It also makes the theory difficult to test. Neutralization should instead be seen as
playing a role in persistence in or desistance from criminal behavior. Additionally,
the theory’s central premises need to be substantially complicated. The notions that
all excuses or justifications are “bad” and that reform involves “accepting complete
responsibility” for one’s actions are not tenable. Sykes and Matza were right to draw
attention to self-understandings and attributions, but criminology was wrong in seeing
neutralization theory as the last word on cognition in criminal behavior.

Książka zawiera gruntowną analizę funkcjonujących w Polsce oraz w Stanach Zjednoczonych rozwiązań prawnych dotyczących obrony koniecznej. Autor w oparciu o poglądy doktryny oraz orzecznictwo przedstawia podobieństwa i różnice w kształcie instytucji obrony koniecznej w obu systemach prawnych, wskazując jednocześnie na trudności wynikające z braku jednolitego i uniwersalnego systemu prawa karnego w USA. Celem tworzenia publikacji było ustalenie, czy polski kontratyp obrony koniecznej w jego obecnym brzmieniu znacząco różni się od obrony koniecznej w Stanach Zjednoczonych.
Niniejsze opracowanie to jednak coś więcej niż zestawienie obowiązujących w obu systemach prawnych przepisów i regulacji. Jest to kompendium wiedzy dla wszystkich zainteresowanych tematyką systemu prawa amerykańskiego, a w szczególności amerykańskiego prawa karnego. Autor omawia nie tylko konstrukcję i proces kształtowania się instytucji obrony koniecznej za oceanem, ale także szeroko opisuje historyczny rozwój prawa karnego w USA, jego źródła oraz znaczną ewolucję jego kształtu wobec wzorców brytyjskich.
Autor analizując problematykę obrony koniecznej w dwóch tak różnych systemach prawnych – prawa kontynentalnego oraz prawa historycznie wywodzącego się z systemu common law – nie traktuje żadnego z tych systemów w sposób nadrzędny wobec drugiego. Instytucja ta opisana jest więc w ciekawej, równoważnej perspektywie.

ISBN 978-83-227-9461-6

This paper focuses on one community in Cambodia that won back land from a large land deal by grabbing onto the rupture in property relations initiated by a one-year land titling campaign. I document the struggle between competing legibility and illegibility projects which I examine through two moments, one of the state choosing to see its population and their relations to territory, and another in which the state’s excuses for not recognizing smallholders’ claims began to falter. By centring the role of excuses, I show how state authority and property relations ruptured around the campaign and how traces of the campaign enabled citizens to claim the right to have rights.

(English version)
OUR MORAL PRACTICES OF ASCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR DAMAGES GENERATED BY WRONGDOING REFLECT THE BELIEF IN A DISTINCTION BETWEEN SITUATIONS WHERE AGENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES AND SITUATIONS WHERE THEY ARE NOT. THIS DISTINCTION IS VERY GENERAL BUT IT COULD BE EXPLAINED FROM MORE CONCRETE DISTINCTIONS LIKE THOSE THAT ARE IN THE CASES OF ACCIDENT, NEGLIGENCE, IMPRUDENCE, INADVERTENCE AND COERCION. ANALYZING SUCH MORE CONCRETE DISTINCTIONS WILL HELP UNDERSTAND THE GENERAL DISTINCTION SIGNED.
    IN THIS INVESTIGATION I ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE MOST CONCRETE DISTINCTIONS FROM SITUATIONS THAT ARE INTENDED TO EXCUSE OR JUSTIFY AN INCORRECT ACTION THAT GENERATED A DAMAGE. I PROPOSE TO UNDERSTAND THE EXCUSES AS ALLEGATIONS WHICH CONSISTS TO SHOW THAT THE SENTENCE USED IN THE ACCUSATION TO DESCRIBE WHAT HAPPENED IS MISLEADING AND IT WOULD BE UNJUST TO ASSIGN RESPONSIBILITY BASED ON IT. BY RE-DESCRIBING THE ACTION IT IS INTENDED THAT THE ASCRIPTION OF RESPONSIBILITY IS FOR A LOT OF SERIOUS ACTION. WHAT IS PLAYING ON THE EXCUSES IS TO DETERMINE WHETHER THE AGENT IS RESPONSIBLE. ALSO, FROM JOHN GARDNER'S PROPOSAL, I PROPOSE THAT JUSTIFYING AN INCORRECT ACTION CONSIST IN ELIMINATE THE PROHIBITION IMPOSED FOR A PROTECTED REASON -PRINCIPLES, RULES, NORMS, LAWS - MAKING PERMISSIBLE THAT THE AGENT CONSIDERS AND ACTS FOR ONE OR MORE REASONS THAT IN MOST CIRCUMSTANCES ARE EXCLUDED BY THE PROTECTED REASON IN QUESTION.
    THE ANALYSIS OF CASES OF ACCIDENT, NEGLIGENCE, IMPRUDENCE, INADVERTENCE AND COERCION IN THE CONTEXT OF EXCUSES AND JUSTIFICATIONS WILL HELP ELUCIDATE THE GENERAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN SITUATIONS WHERE AGENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES AND SITUATIONS WHERE THEY ARE NOT. ALL THIS WITH THE AIM OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING OUR COMMON RESPONSIBILITY ATTRIBUTION PRACTICES.

(Versión es español)
Nuestras prácticas morales de adscripción de responsabilidad por daños generados por acciones incorrectas reflejan la creencia en una distinción entre situaciones donde los agentes son responsables de sus acciones y consecuencias y situaciones donde no lo son. Esta distinción es muy general pero podría explicarse a partir de distinciones más concretas como las que se encuentran en los casos de accidente, negligencia, imprudencia, inadvertencia y coerción. Analizar tales distinciones más concretas ayudará a entender la distinción general señalada.
En esta investigación intento explicar las distinciones más concretas a partir de situaciones donde se busca excusar o justificar una acción incorrecta que generó un daño. Propongo para ello entender las excusas como alegatos que consisten en mostrar que la oración utilizada en la acusación para describir lo que ocurrió es engañosa y sería injusto adscribir responsabilidad con base en ella. La descripción es engañosa porque hubo factores o circunstancias especiales que exigen una descripción diferente. Al redescribir la acción se pretende que la adscripción de responsabilidad sea por una acción mucho menos grave. Lo que está en juego en las excusas es determinar de qué es responsable el agente.
También planteo, a partir de la propuesta de John Gardner, que justificar una acción incorrecta consiste en eliminar la prohibición impuesta por una razón protegida –principios, reglas, normas, leyes– haciendo permisible que el agente considere y actúe por una o más razones que en la mayoría de las circunstancias son excluidas por la razón protegida en cuestión. De esta manera una justificación exitosa logra mostrar que era permisible llevar a cabo una acción incorrecta o incluso que tal acción era correcta dadas las circunstancias y los factores especiales de la situación.
El análisis de los casos de accidente, negligencia, imprudencia, inadvertencia y coerción en el contexto de las excusas y las justificaciones ayudará a elucidar la distinción general entre situaciones donde los agentes son responsables de sus acciones y consecuencias y situaciones donde no lo son. Todo esto con el objetivo de tener una mejor comprensión de nuestras prácticas comunes de adscripción de responsabilidad.

Suç teorisinin gelişiminde önemli bir aşamayı hukuka aykırılık ile kusurluluğunun
ayrılması oluşturur. Bu durum haksızlık ve kusur ile doğrudan bağlantılıdır. Bu bağ, hukuka
uygunluk nedenleri ve kusurluluğu etkileyen haller ile de organik bir bağ oluşturur. Bu önemli
ayrım yapıldıktan sonra kusurluluğu etkileyen haller içinde mazeret nedenleri tanımlanmıştır.
Mazeret nedenlerinin kusurluluğu etkileyen diğer hallerden farklı olduğu anlaşılmıştır.
Bu ayrımlar Kıta Avrupası Hukuk Sistemi ile Anglosakson hukuk sisteminin karşılaştırılması
açısından da önemli bir çıkış noktası oluşturur. Makalemizde hem bu ayrımların ortaya çıkışındaki
tarihsel süreç, hem bunların gerekçeleri hem de sonuçları, karşılaştırmalı hukuk
perspektifinden ele alınmıştır. Böylelikle bu iki büyük hukuk sisteminin ve özellikle Alman ceza
hukuku ile Türk ceza hukukunun da karşılaştırılması denemesine girişilmiştir.

The central issue in the philosophical debate about hell is whether hell is morally justifiable. The present paper is an indirect contribution to this debate: it identifies and examines the different conceptions of agency that inform this discussion and the ideas about responsibility that underpin them. What emerges from this reconsideration of 'hell' is a complex and demanding conception of the judgment of moral responsibility that provides the foundation for a non-classical view of hell.

Legal theory has failed to acknowledge how central a concept self-defense is for the construction of American identities. Across demographic and ideological divides and throughout American history, self-defense has functioned as a mechanism to assert self-worth. This Article argues that this is an insidious baggage for self-defense to carry and that we would be better to jettison rather than claim it. The argument is grounded in an analysis of various manifestations of the American self-defensive culture. In law, these include developments in penal codes, constitutional criminal law, gun laws, procedural rules, the law of police, and prison law and policy. This compound proactively incites persons under all colors of law to seize opportunities to exercise self-defense, assigns virtuousness to self-defensive achievements, and augments their effectiveness. Thus, the contemporary ubiquity of self-defense serves to articulate, distribute, and breed aggression, re-legitimizing violence through the back door. Under this light, the Article suggests a moratorium on the idea that self-defense is a justification for violence.
Analytic criminal jurisprudence generally takes justification to be a category that applies across time and place. Although all the elements of a crime are satisfied, when a justification defense applies the act is morally permissible and hence exoneration is due. But the idea that self-defense justifies violence is culturally, historically, and politically loaded. These conditions ought to inform its jurisprudential analysis. The Article suggests incorporating a cultural receptivity criterion into the justification-excuse calculus, making meaningful the fact that the criminal law is public law. As a public institution, self-defense is detrimental to material welfare, equality, democracy, and ethics of cooperation and care, such that its social roles corrupt whatever justifiable moral core it ideally has. We should not want to give individual self-defenders the powers that justifications confer, nor vindicate the values that justificatory self-defense stands for or accept the socio-political conditions that self-defense laws create or perpetuate. Hence, we can hold that the functions that self-defense regimes serve in contemporary society render them unjustifiable, while remaining agnostic on the question of whether morality permits self-defense.
The Article proposes to understand self-defense as an excuse, which negates the doer’s punishability but not the unlawfulness of the act. Self-defenders would still be relieved of criminal liability, but for reasons anchored in social conditions and public values rather than private morality. Instead of celebrating self-defense as a vindication of natural justice, the normative question ought to shift to the communal failures that give rise to violence and that make it seem inevitable.

El concepto de Obliegenheit es conocido desde hace tiempo por la ciencia jurídico-penal en el contexto de la provocación de la falta de responsabilidad penal. Allí la lesión de Obliegenheiten sirve como criterio normativo para excluir el llamado a una eximente y a partir de allí se restablece la imputación ordinaria. Sin embargo, en los últimos años se ha expandido notablemente su uso a muy diversos ámbitos, tales como la imputación objetiva y la fundamentación de las medidas de seguridad para imputables peligrosos. En todos estos casos las Obliegenheiten aparecen caracterizadas según la “teoría del presupuesto”, dominante en el Derecho privado. Sin embargo, existen muchas razones para entender que la dogmática jurídico-penal ha hecho un mal uso del concepto.

This paper aims for a more robust epistemological disjunctivism (ED) by offering on its behalf a new and better response to the 'new evil genius' problem. The first section articulates the 'new evil genius challenge' (NEG challenge) to ED, specifying its two components: the 'first-order' and 'diagnostic' problems for ED. The first-order problem challenges proponents of ED to offer some understanding of the intuition behind the thought that your radically deceived duplicate is no less justified than you are for adopting her perceptual beliefs. In the second section, I argue that blamelessness explanations are inadequate to the task and offer better explanations in their place—that of 'trait-level virtue' and 'reasonability'. The diagnostic problem challenges proponents of ED to explain why it is that classical internalists disagree with them about how to interpret new evil genius considerations. The proponent of ED owes some error theory. I engage this problem in the third section, arguing that classical internalists are misled to overlook disjunctivist interpretations of new evil genius thinking owing to a mistaken commitment to a kind of 'vindicatory' explanation of proper perceptual belief.

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione. -2. L'inesigibilità quale ratio dell'art. 384, primo comma? Alcune osservazioni generali. -3. (Segue) La "lettura romantica": istinto e sentimento. -4. (Segue) La "lettura esistenzialista": il conflitto motivazionale, o di coscienza. -5. Una lettura giustificante dell'art. 384, primo comma, CP? Il (falso) problema della "confrontabilità" degli interessi in gioco. -6. (Segue) La necessità giudiziaria ex art. 384 CP come caso speciale di stato di necessità ex art. 54 CP? -7. (Segue) La "variante altruistica, o familistica". Uno sguardo ad alcuni ordinamenti stranieri. -8. La "variante egoistica": nemo tenetur se detegere. -9. (Segue) Perplessità: a) Inconciliabilità di alcuni dei reati ai quali si applica il primo comma dell'art. 384 con la logica del nemo tenetur. -10. (Segue) b) Nemo tenetur e possibili "nocumenti all'onore". -11. Conclusioni.

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.

John Gardner –  H.L.A. Hart’s heir on the Chair of Jurisprudence of the University of Oxford – dubs his own theory of personal responsibility an ‘Aristotelian View’. In the first part of the paper, the core of this view – the coincidence of “basic responsibility” with “practical reason” – is presented in connection with some aspects of the last decades’ Oxford Jurisprudence. Some general implications of this view for the theory of justification and excuse in the criminal law are then discussed. In the second part, Oxford ethical naturalistic cognitivism is presented as the implicit moral background of Gardner’s philosophy of criminal law. In the final part of the paper, some points of contact between Oxford ethics and Gardner’s theory of excuses as based on “normative expectations” are highlighted, in connection with some insights of Gardner’s mentor: Tony Honoré. Finally, the compatibility of Gardner’s theory of responsibility with his pluralistic liberalism is explained.

Svolti brevi cenni sulla c.d. insanity defense, si analizza la sentenza della Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti, che ha statuito la costituzionalità di una disposizione statale che abolisce un nucleo fondamentale della c.d. M’Naghten Rule, limitandone l’applicabilità alla sola ipotesi in cui si provi l’insussistenza del c.d. cognitive prong. Tale impostazione, distonica rispetto alla congiunta previsione del c.d. moral prong della Rule, radicata nella plurisecolare tradizione di common law, si mostra costituzionalmente problematica. Si esaminano quindi gli argomenti attraverso cui la decisione ritiene infondate le violazioni costituzionali lamentate, nonché le obiezioni formulate nel dissenso. Si svolgono poi alcune considerazioni critiche, anzitutto sui rapporti tra insanity defense e mens rea nella dimensione costituzionale; in secondo luogo, rispetto alla scelta di vagliare la norma in base alla clausola del due process, e non del divieto di pene crudeli ed inusuali, pur evocato nel Writ of certiorari. Ancora, si valuta la rilevanza centrale attribuita dalla Corte alla continua evoluzione delle acquisizioni neuroscientifiche, da recepire in sede legislativa per stabilire e aggiornare costantemente le regole relative ai presupposti soggettivi della responsabilità penale, non essendo dunque possibile «cristallizzare» uno standard costituzionale di garanzia minimo – per quanto consolidato nella «tradizione storica» – omogeneo per tutti gli Stati. Si individuano altresì le ragioni dell’attitudine deferenziale nei confronti della discrezionalità legislativa della Corte nel sindacato costituzionale delle norme penali sostanziali, segnalando infine il rischio che la sentenza in esame possa innescare un trend di abolizione della insanity defense da parte dei legislatori statali.

This article offers a critical discussion of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Kahler v. Kansas, wherein the Court upheld the constitutional legitimacy of Kansas’s adoption of a modified version of the M’Naghten Rule. In so ruling, the Court has (once again) emphasized the paramount role of the states in setting standards of criminal responsibility. Accordingly, no particular test of insanity has developed into a constitutional baseline. The article begins with a preliminary analysis of the doctrine of legal insanity in the United States, including its standards and jurisprudential
interpretations. It then moves to analyzing the arguments made by the Court in Kahler in both major and dissenting opinions. Then, the article critically discusses the main normative issues that have emerged in the reasoning of the Court: 1) the (controversial) constitutional and substantive relationship between legal insanity and mens rea; 2) the Court’s reluctance to scrutinize the constitutional dimension of legal insanity under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments; 3) the Court’s explicit reliance on advancing neuroscientific knowledge, amongst other factors, to aid in the setting of the parameters of criminal responsibility at the individual state level. Furthermore, the article considers the perils of the Court’s generalized attitude of deference to state legislators as regards substantive criminal law issues, including the legitimization of the abolition of legal insanity across states.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa: inquadramento sistematico dell’insanity defense nell’ordinamento statunitense. - 1.1. I molteplici e differenziati standard attualmente previsti a livello federale e statale. – 2. La questione oggetto di giudizio nel caso Kahler v. Kansas: tra imputabilità, colpevolezza e limiti costituzionali di natura sostanziale allo ius puniendi. - 2.1. La decisione della Corte. - 2.2. La dissenting opinion. – 3. Considerazioni critiche: sui rapporti tra insanity defense e mens rea. - 3.1. Considerazioni critiche: perché la Corte opta per la c.d. substantive due process review e non vaglia la disposizione sindacata in base al divieto di pene crudeli ed inusuali dell’VIII Emendamento? - 3.2. Un affidamento inedito (e forse troppo disinvolto?) all’evoluzione delle c.d. neuroscienze, da recepirsi progressivamente nelle legislazioni statali. – 4. Una esemplificazione del tradizionale judicial restraint della Corte in materia penale sostanziale: separazione dei poteri, federalismo e diritto penale sostanziale. – 5. Rilievi critici conclusivi: il rischio di innescare una «deriva abolizionista» nelle legislazioni statali.

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism is a meta-ethical theory that explains moral motivation and also provides a conception of how to carry out moral deliberation. It supports non-consequentialism – the theory that both consequences and deontological considerations are morally significant in moral deliberation. Regarding the issue of punishment, non-consequentialism allows us to take account of the need for deterrence as well as principles of fairness, justice, and even desert. Moreover, Scanlonian contractualism accounts for permissibility in terms of justifiability: An act is permissible if and only if it can be justified to everyone affected by it. This contractualist thesis explains why it is always impermissible to frame an innocent person, why vicarious punishment is impermissible, and why there has to be a cap on sentences. Contractualism therefore allows us to take deterrence as a goal of punishment without the excess of utilitarianism. This paper further argues that the resulting view is superior to pure retributivism. Finally, it shows why legal excuses and mitigation can be justified in terms of the notion of negative desert.

Governments’ policies and actions often precipitate public blame firestorms and mediated scandals targeted at individual or collective policy makers. In the face of losing credibility and resources, officeholders are tempted to apply strategies of blame avoidance which permeate administrative structures, operations and language use.

Linguistic aspects of blame avoidance are yet to be studied by discourse analysts in great detail. In this article, I contribute to filling this gap in knowledge by proposing an improved heuristic for understanding typical macroconversational discursive practices adopted by officeholders in the circumstances of blame risk to achieve the goal of positive self-presentation.

Based on a multidisciplinary review of scholarly literature, I show how personal and institutional risk aversion involves the application of certain strategies of argumentation, framing, denial, social actor and action representation, legitimation and manipulation. I use concrete textual examples from public statements of UK government officeholders to illustrate how blame avoidance works at the highest level of administration.

I argue that to understand blame avoidance as a dominant recurring theme in public communication we should look beyond current linguistic approaches to conflict talk. This could lead to the application of new useful analytic tools within discourse studies and open new avenues of critical research into language use in politics and bureaucratic organisations.

El texto es un balance de la discusión central de Discusiones 7 relativa a la existencia de derechos de necesidad y deberes de tolerancia. En una primera parte, se presenta brevemente el ámbito de la discusión, así como las tesis debatidas. En una segunda parte, se analizan algunas propuestas sobre la constitución de deberes y la atribución de responsabilidad que pueden dar sustento a las tesis defendidas originalmente por Jesús María Silva Sánchez. Específicamente, se estudian concepciones interpersonales sobre la responsabilidad y hegelianas sobre la justificación de deberes jurídicos. Por último, en una tercera parte, se analiza el rendimiento de algunas críticas presentadas en la discusión original. En particular, se considera la forma en que se pueden identificar deberes jurídico-penales, la forma en que se utiliza el marco hohfeldiano de posiciones jurídicas, y el rol que juegan algunos supuestos que vinculan lo normativo con lo fáctico.

– This article focuses on the themes of " excuses " and " forgiveness " , in order to elucidate the genealogy and the different trends of the contemporary debate about responsibility. To this purpose, the topic will be examined through three main axes, which structure the essay. The first one is an historical philosophical perspective, which aims at grasping continuities and disconti-nuities in the centuries-old history of responsibility, by offering an overview of the theories concerning the theme of excuses, since Aristotle's Ethica Nicho-machea up to Hegel's Principles of the Philosophy of Right. The second axe is an analytical perspective, which attempts at highlighting the multiple ties that – within analytic philosophy – link the elucidation of the nature and of the structure of the responsible action with the efforts of conceptual determination of the notions of " excuses " and of " forgiveness ". Finally, the third axe consists in a comparative perspective, which assumes the conceptual pair 'excuses-forgiveness' as a privileged point of view, in order to grasp conver-gences and divergences between the analytical debate on responsibility and the reflexion on responsibility within French post-phenomenological philosophy.

En el trabajo desarrollo el concepto de compatibilismo práctico, de inspiración kantiana, de Christine Korsgaard. Primero analizo distintas teorías sobre la libertad de la voluntad en la acción. Luego, trazo distinciones sobre los conceptos teóricos y prácticos de responsabilidad. Además, sostengo que es posible afirmar que existen distintos niveles de responsabilidad en la teoría moral de Kant, y por último, afirmo la posibilidad de existencia de razones excusatorias desde el punto de vista práctico kantiano.

In this article I intend to set forth the concept of practical compatibilism that Christine Korsgaard develops, based on Kant ideas. First, I analyze different theories of freedom of will. Then, I draw distinctions about the theoretical and practical concepts of responsibility. Finally, I sustain that it is possible to affirm the existence of different degrees of responsibility and excusatory reasons in Kant’s moral theory.

Ongoing discussions among international lawyers on defences in state responsibility have close analogies with debates in two other fields: debates in general legal theory on defeasibility in law, and debates in criminal law theory (and philosophy) on the elements of criminal responsibility. The similarities are not surprising. But it is striking how little cross-fertilisation there seems to have been, for jurisprudence and criminal law scholars have developed a number of points and distinctions that international law theorists should find very useful. This essay illustrates these claims. Section 1 looks at defences from the point of view of general legal theory, and Section 2 does the same from the point of view of criminal law theory, recommending specific solutions to particular problems. Section 3 then shows how these contributions can help to answer some persistent questions surrounding defences in the law of state responsibility.

Türk Ceza Hukuku’nda emrin ifasının hukuki niteliği konusunda farklı görüşler ileri sürülmektedir. Hukuka uygun emirlerin ifasının hukuka uygunluk nedeni teşkil ettiği genel olarak kabul edilmekle birlikte, hukuka aykırı emirlerin ifasının niteliği, özellikle hukuka aykırı fakat bağlayıcı emir kavramı tartışmalıdır. Bu çalışmada tartışmalara ışık tutmak amacıyla öncelikle hukuka aykırı bağlayıcı emir kavramının kapsamlı bir şekilde değerlendirildiği Alman Ceza Hukuku’ndaki durum incelenmiştir. Sonrasında kanuni düzenlemelerin benzerliği sebebiyle kısaca İtalyan Ceza Hukuku’na değinilmiştir. Yapılan karşılaştırma sonucunda Türk Ceza Hukuku’nda emrin ifasının hukuki niteliğine dair tespitlerde bulunulmuş, hukuka aykırı bağlayıcı emrin ifasının mazeret nedeni niteliği taşıdığı savunulmuş, ancak bu konudaki düzenlemelerin emrin hukuka aykırılığının bilinmesi veya bariz olması açısından sorunlu olduğuna işaret edilmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Yetkili merciin emrini ifa, amirin emrini ifa, emrin ifası, hukuka uygunluk nedeni, mazeret nedeni, kusuru etkileyen neden

In Turkish Penal Law, different views are put forward on the legal nature of execution of order. Although the execution of lawful orders is generally accepted as a ground for justification, the legal nature of unlawful orders, especially the concept of unlawful but binding orders is controversial. In this study, fi rstly in order to shed light on the discussions, the situation in the German Penal Law, where the concept of unlawful binding orders is in detail analyzed, was examined. Following this, because of the similarity of the legal regulations, the Italian Penal Law was briefly mentioned.  As a result of the comparison some points about legal nature of the execution of order in Turkish Penal Law were made. It was defended that carrying out the unlawful but binding order has the nature of a ground for excuse. However it was also pointed out that the current legal regulations on this topic are problematical in terms of fulfilling knowingly the unlawful orders or obeying the manifestly illegal orders.

Keywords: Execution of orders of a competent authority, carrying out of superior’s order, execution of order, grounds of justification and excuse or of affecting of culpability.

This paper, originally written for a conference on criminal law in times of emergency, considers the implications of the 'German Airliner case' for criminal law theory. In that case, the German constitutional court struck down as unconstitutional a law empowering state officials to order the shooting down of a hijacked plane on the grounds that the state could not order the killing of innocent civilians. Some have argued that despite this ruling, individual officials should still be entitled to claim a criminal law justification defence. I argue that the nature of justification defences necessarily ties them to the powers of the state to engage in such activity. I also argue that both the constitutional decision and its criminal law implications are salutary.

Discusses epistemic norms and the demands that reasons place upon us.  Argues against evidentialist views on the grounds that relations between evidence and belief are not the only normatively significant relations.  Argues against knowledge-first approaches to epistemic normativity on the grounds that one might do no epistemic wrong even if one believes what one doesn't know.

The argument between retributivists and consequentialists about what morally justifies the punishment of offenders is incoherent. If we were to discover that all of the contending justifications were mistaken, there is no realistic prospect that this would lead us to abandon legal punishment. Justification of words, beliefs and deeds can only be intelligible on the assumption that if a justification were found to be invalid and there were no alternative justification, one would be prepared to stop saying, believing or doing what one has attempted to justify. Therefore, the moral standing or basis of our practices of punishing offenders cannot rest on a justification of it.

Martha Nussbaum that allegedly weaken our need to condemn in order to make explicit what sorts of things that would have to be true for the proverb '"tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner" ("to understand all is to forgive all")' to contain at least the seed of truth. In Jones' words, 'It is a philosophical and legal truism that what kind of explanation we offer of [someone's] behaviour will affect the kind of judgement that we make of [that person] in virtue of that behaviour, but which explanatory strategies have which effects, and why?'. Jones' focus is on condemnatory attitudes rather than on condemnation itself, for his concern is to analyze some of the modes of understanding that would incline us to lessen the strength of the reactive attitude of condemnation. Following Socrates, Gaita argues that evil emerges out of ignorance and he thinks that understanding this should incline us to judge perpetrators less harshly than we otherwise would. Nussbaum, on the other hand, following Seneca, argues that sensitivity to human vulnerability to adverse circumstances will incline us to be more merciful towards perpetrators than we would otherwise be. Jones, without committing himself to either

I offer a novel interpretation of Hume on skepticism, drawing on a theory of excuses—in contrast to justifications and exemptions. Hume’s excuse shows that criticizing one’s beliefs on the basis of skeptical arguments is unreasonable when forming such beliefs is a primary aspect of human nature. Generally, it is unreasonable to criticize a creature for having a feature that is part of the nature of such creatures. The appeal to universal aspects of human nature as an indulgence rather than justification can be found throughout Hume’s texts. Though this excuse holds regardless of whether an individual’s belief is flawed according to some ideal, non-species-specific standard, it does not mitigate criticism of the whole species. Hume accepted the species-wide judgment that humans are epistemically limited, even while excusing individual humans for exhibiting human frailty. Once this is clarified, the differences from and advantages over familiar, “naturalist” interpretations emerge.

Whatever the rational and argumentative dimension of his whole philosophy, Spinoza can in no way be considered as a theorist of the “justification” of political action by reference to “values” that could reach an “enlightened conscience” or “morals”, or by the “law” or even the “Constitution” of the Republic. Spinoza is thus republican in a vague sense, but democratic in a very radical sense. In fact, it completely submits the just and the unjust (like the pious and the impious) to the legal and the illegal, that is to say, morality (just like religion) to politics, to the exteriority of accounts and behaviors rather than the interiority of beliefs and intentions. In the immanence of the accounts, nothing can override the preferences of the people. The real name of politics in Spinoza, as in Rancière, is thus “Democracy” much more than “Republic”. To oppose republican “values” or “constitutions” to the democratic “preferences” of peoples would be to bring theology back into politics, when Spinoza’s first and constant effort was to separate them.

En los últimos meses son muchos los penalistas que, ante la saturación de los sistemas sanitarios como consecuencia de la pandemia provocada por el COVID-19, se han pronunciado en favor de una reforma-en clave utilitarista-del sistema clásico de resolución de las colisiones de deberes penalmente relevantes. Por un lado, se defiende ahora la conveniencia de jerarquizar los deberes en conflicto a partir de la expectativa de éxito y la esperanza de vida de cada paciente. Por el otro, se niega que el paciente que está siendo ya tratado con un respirador tenga un mejor derecho frente a quien todavía espera ser tratado. El objetivo central de este trabajo es contender este reciente giro utilitarista. En el seno de un ordenamiento penal liberal, atento a los derechos individuales de cada uno de los sujetos involucrados en el conflicto, ni cabe obligar al médico bajo amenaza de pena a salvar a quien tiene mejor perspectiva de éxito o una mayor esperanza de vida, ni cabe justificar el homicidio del médico que interrumpe un tratamiento indicado a fin de salvar a un nuevo paciente con un pronóstico más favorable.

It is commonly asserted that the core teaching of Machiavelli’s political philosophy is that “the ends justify the means.” While numerous scholars of Machiavelli have disputed this interpretation and pointed out that Machiavelli never wrote this phrase, most of that scholarship has focused on the role of “ends” in Machiavelli’s thought, and questions about whether or not Machiavelli was a consequentialist. Far less attention has been paid to the role of justifications in Machiavelli’s political thought. This essay argues that attributing the phrase “the end justifies the means” to Machiavelli is inaccurate because justification is not Machiavelli’s central concern in his two most famous writings The Prince and the Discourses. Instead, I argue that when Machiavelli evaluates actions, he is more likely to use the language of excuses than the language of justification. The first part of the essay examines the frequency and context in which Machiavelli uses the words excuse (scusa) and justification (iustificazione) as well as their cognates. Machiavelli uses excuse five times more frequently than he uses justification in these two texts. Furthermore by looking at the context in which these words are used, I demonstrate that Machiavelli never justifies an action, but he does occasionally excuse a morally dubious action. The second section considers the difference between justifying and excusing an action with through J. L. Austin’s essay “A Plea for Excuses.” My central claim in this section is that freedom is not simply a capacity an actor possesses, but that freedom is a dimension through which others assess the responsibility for an action. The more freedom an actor has, the more responsible that actor is held for an action. An actor that is held responsible for an act must justify the action when it somehow goes astray. Conversely an actor who is not held responsible for an action is more likely to offer excuses for an action. The final section links this exploration of excuses and freedom to James Tully’s work on agonistic freedom. In Tully’s work, the act of re-describing an existing norm is one way in which agents can exercise their freedom. My claim is that an attempt to excuse a morally dubious action in the way that Machiavelli does in The Prince and The Discourses is one example of Tully’s account of freedom as the ability to “think and act differently.”

Just War Theory asserts that armed conflict can be fought in a way that safeguards moral and legal norms while responding to pragmatic/military imperatives. One of the ways in which it seeks to safeguard justice is through specific provisions for the immunity of, and due care for, the vulnerable and innocent. Unfortunately, two doctrines within Just War Theory – the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Supreme Emergency – suspend or vacate these provisions. The net effect is to render justifications inaccessible, leaving only excuses, the use of which establishes that no one is truly accountable, no meaningful guidance is available, and sheer self-interest may be allowed to underwrite terrible harms. This paper explores the implications of excuses and excuse-making for the laws of war, arguing that unless key doctrines are re-oriented, ‘Just War Theory’ risks playing out as merely ‘Excusable War Theory.’

Questions of right and wrong are sometimes undetermined. What is more, human moral agency is constrained by cognitive and motivational limitations, making it at times hard to know right from wrong and, at other times, to avoid wrongdoing. We refer to these features (the indeterminacy and the agential limitations) as imperfections. Our initial point, is to show that moral practices have ways of coping with these imperfections. In fact, moral practices can themselves be envisaged as manifestations of such imperfections, or as ways of dealing with them. We then investigate the disruptive potential of artificial decision-makers into moral practices, with particular focus on the ethical space in which self-driving cars will be operating.

In an earlier paper, 'Peter Geach on nonsense, confusion and sin' 1 , I suggested that what one can say in explanation of one's own actions suffers from a severe limitation: one can shed little light on the question why one acted on one's reasons for an action rather than on one's reasons against that action. In this paper I want to explore this suggestion further. One of my tasks will be to distinguish my question from three standard philosophical questions that have tended to overshadow it: the question of freewill and determinism; that of the relation between fact and value; and that of the possibility of weakness of will. On these I shall, on the whole, maintain a studied agnosticism.

Hukuka uygunluk nedenlerinin manevi unsurları, ceza hukukunun tartışmalı meselelerinden biri olup, bu konuda çok farklı görüşler ileri sürülmüştür. Hukuka aykırılığı objektif olarak kabul eden klasik suç öğretisinde bu unsurlara yer verilmezken, özellikle Alman Ceza Hukukunda şahsi haksızlık öğretisinin gelişimiyle haksızlığın manevi unsurlarından söz edilmeye başlanmıştır. Türk Ceza Hukukunda da yeni Türk Ceza Kanunu’nun yürürlüğünden sonra, öğretide söz konusu unsurların kabulü yönünde bir eğilim mevcuttur. Ne var ki manevi unsurları kabul eden görüş, bunların gerçekleşmemesi halinde bağlanacak sonuçlar hususunda oldukça farklı yaklaşımlar sergilemektedir. Çalışmamızda konuyla ilgili tartışmalar ve ileri sürülen görüşler özetlenerek, Türk Hukuku bakımından bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Hukuka aykırılık, şahsi haksızlık öğretisi, hukuka uygunluk nedenleri, maddi unsurlar, manevi unsurlar, elverişsiz teşebbüs, mefruz suç, hata, tersine hata

Abstract: Unknown Justification is one of the most contested themes in criminal law dogmatic and there is a wide range of views on this issue. According to the objective conception of justifications there is no place for a “subjective” intent and/or knowledge element, which is still the prevailing view in the Turkish Criminal Law. Yet, with the introduction of the new Penal Code there is a newly, under the German influence emerging theory of subjective elements of justification, makes the existence of a subjective element a necessary component for justifying reasons for otherwise criminal conduct. There exists, however, a lack of clarity concerning the legal consequences of this new theory. It is the objective of this article to sum up views, historical background and try to resolve this newly emerging issue in Turkish Criminal Law.

Keywords: Unlawfulness, personal injustice theory, justifications, material elements, mental elements, impossible attempt, impossible crime, mistake, reversed mistake

The principle of humanism is one of the key principles of criminal law, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. One of the practical expressions of this principle is the concept of excuses and justifications in criminal law. The application of this concept allows to achieve the fullest assessment of the objective and subjective aspects of the wrongful act. The topicality of this article is in that the concept of excuses and justifications requires a comprehensive study in order to develop it further. Especially, the availability of doctrinal sources of legal interpretation in this field is relevant for the countries whose criminal legislation and law enforcement practice are still in the process of establishment. This article clarifies the concept of excuses and justifications, provides a comparative analysis of legislation in the field of grounds for exemption from criminal responsibility and punishment which constitutes the subject of this work, and discusses the main aspects of implementation and application of the concept in the criminal law of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Undertaking such an analysis is necessitated by the fact that criminal law, with its key legal institutions, is currently actively developing in both countries. The article’s purpose is to keep track of those developments and reveal the gaps, in order to suggest any possible solutions. The comparative method of researching these two Central Asian criminal jurisdictions under review is used for the first time in a scholarly piece in English. In short, the article arrives at the following main conclusions: (1) while being included in the criminal jurisdictions of both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the implementation of the institution of excuses and justifications in each of these jurisdictions went in their own unique ways and directions which may be easily explained by the unique contextual developments of law and practice; (2) the observed trends in the development of this institution in both states are to be lauded, and (3) the more specific the legal rules on excuses and justifications are, the better they can serve the purpose of professional qualification of criminal offences.

T. M. Scanlon’s contractualism is a meta-ethical theory that explains moral motivation and also provides a conception of how to carry out moral deliberation. It supports non-consequentialism – the theory that both consequences and deontological considerations are morally significant in moral deliberation. Regarding the issue of punishment, non-consequentialism allows us to take account of the need for deterrence as well as principles of fairness, justice, and even desert. Moreover, Scanlonian contractualism accounts for permissibility in terms of justifiability: An act is permissible if and only if it can be justified to everyone affected by it. This contractualist thesis explains why it is always impermissible to frame an innocent person, why vicarious punishment is impermissible, and why there has to be a cap on sentences. Contractualism therefore allows us to take deterrence as a goal of punishment without the excess of utilitarianism. This paper further argues that the resulting view is superior to pure retributivism. Finally, it shows why legal excuses and mitigation can be justified in terms of the notion of negative desert.

The New Evil Demon Problem (NEDP) is probably the most serious objection that the upholders of a knowledge-first epistemology face. The general format of the solution that several of them (Littlejohn 2009, forthcoming; Weatherson 2008; Williamson forthcoming) have given to this problem is as follows: only the good-case beliefs are justified. The norm satisfied by the bad-case beliefs is not the norm of justification. The purpose of this contribution is to buttress this reply by showing that it is in fact supported by the ordinary concept of justification.

Can strong desires linked to addictions or 'compulsive' mental disorders constitute the basis for a good excuse? Anthony Kenny claimed that they cannot, insofar as 'irresistible desires' or 'inabilities to will' are simply inconceivable things. Kenny's position has in recent years been challenged through three main arguments. These may be dubbed: the 'internal coercion' argument, the 'volitional defect' argument, and the 'emotional storm' argument. In this paper, the first and the second argument against Kenny are rejected. It is, however, argued that a certain version of the 'emotional storm' argument may have some ethical and legal plausibility. Nonetheless, taken as a whole, the analysis of these arguments seems to confirm the soundness of the core of Kenny's argument: the unacceptability of an excuse based on the idea of the irresistibility of an impulse or a desire.