The Relevance of Intention to Criminal Wrongdoing
نویسنده
چکیده
Intentions are seemingly ubiquitous in the criminal law. Their presence can turn reckless homicide into first-degree murder, reckless endangerment into attempted murder, violation of a security clearance into treason, and inadvertent mistake of fact into perjury. But should intentions play the pivotal role that they do in determining the categorization of crimes? Recently, there has been a lively debate about this question that mirrors, and at points interacts with, a parallel debate in moral philosophy about whether intentions are relevant in an important way to moral impermissibility. 1 The latter debate focuses on the question of whether what is permissible depends in part on what intentions the agent has in acting as she does. Can the agent's intentions ever change a permissible action into an impermissible one or vice versa? In some cases, the arguments in favor of the irrelevance (or relative lack of importance) of intentions to criminal wrongdoing have counterparts in the debate about moral impermissibility. In other cases, the arguments include particular premises concerning the function and nature of the law that lack obvious counterparts in the moral realm. In earlier work, we have defended the thesis that intentions are relevant to moral permissibility and impermissibility, and have developed a particular variant of the so-called " Doctrine of Double Effect " that incorporates a role for intentions in the determination of moral permissibility. 2 In this paper, we extend this reasoning to the legal realm. We argue that intentions are indeed relevant and important to criminal wrongdoing, although not in all the particular ways that they have been taken to be in the law. We begin in section 1 by answering some recent arguments, focusing on particular features of the criminal law, that advocate
منابع مشابه
ترمیم بکارت از منظر حقوق جزا
The Iranian criminal law did not criminalize hymen restoration. But, whenever girls do this act - with its special conditions - as "marriage fraud", it causes criminal liability to realize for him as a perpetrator, and in case of unity of intention for the doctor as complicity in the offense. Also, if the "Hiding adultery" is true as the act of physician, and she has the int...
متن کاملIndividual Characteristics and Ethical Whistle-Blowing Intention in Audit Profession
Background: Individuals characteristics including gender, education level, job experience and job rank are affective and significant variables in work ethic. This research try to study this affection on whistle blowing in audit profession. Thus, the aim of this research is to study of gender effect on whistle blowing as an ethical behavior. Method: The research method is descriptive-correlation...
متن کاملMotivated Cognition on the Bench: Does Criminal Egregiousness Influence Judges' Beliefs About Police Wrongdoing?
متن کامل
Intuitions of Justice: Implications for Criminal Law and Justice Policy
Recent social science research suggests that many if not most judgments about criminal liability and punishment for serious wrongdoing are intuitional rather than reasoned. Further, such intuitions of justice are nuanced and widely shared, even though they concern matters that seem quite complex and subjective. While people may debate the source of these intuitions, it seems clear that, whateve...
متن کاملبررسی رابطه بین ویژگی های شخصیتی با قصد افشاگری در کارکنان بخش سلامت (مورد مطالعه در دانشگاه علوم پزشکی مشهد)
Background: Whistleblowing as a control tool should be encouraged in organizations to deter organizational illegal and immoral wrongdoings that finally are harmful to the society. Personality traits of people are influential factors on their intention to disclose the wrongdoings. This study aimed to assess the relationship between four personality traits (internal locus of control, ethical iden...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2014