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Meaning And Motive In The Law Of Homicide (Reviewing Samuel H. Pillsbury, Judging Evil: Rethinking The Law Of Murder And Manslaughter), Guyora Binder
Meaning And Motive In The Law Of Homicide (Reviewing Samuel H. Pillsbury, Judging Evil: Rethinking The Law Of Murder And Manslaughter), Guyora Binder
Book Reviews
Many criminal law scholars have criticized the Model Penal Code’s restrictive conception of culpability as awareness of risk, and have sought to incorporate motives and desires into culpoability analysis. In his excellent book Judging Evil, Samuel Pillsbury has applied this richer conception of culpability to homicide law. The result is a comprehensive theory of homicide liability, unified by an effort to predicate liability on deficient moral reasoning rather than merely awareness of risk. This review essay explicates and commends Pillsbury’s theory but also criticizes one crucial deficiency. Pillsbury shrinks from one of the most obvious but potentially most controversial implications …
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Framed: Utilitarianism And Punishment Of The Innocent, Guyora Binder, Nicholas J. Smith
Journal Articles
This paper is a defense of utilitarian penology, against the familiar retributivist charge that it promotes framing the innocent, and other charges similarly depending on the notion that utilitarianism encourages officials to deceive the public. Our defense proceeds from the striking fact that utilitarianism's critics do not cite textual evidence that the originators of utilitarian penology in fact endorsed punishing the innocent or deceiving the public. Instead, critics claim that these unsavory policies follow logically from the premises of utilitarianism. Our argument, in brief, is that the charge of framing the innocent rests on a misunderstanding of utilitarian penology. We …