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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder May 2008

The Culpability Of Felony Murder, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

Legal scholars are almost unanimous in condemning felony murder as a morally indefensible form of strict liability. This Article provides the long-missing principled defense of the felony murder doctrine. It argues that felony murder liability is deserved for killing negligently by means of a violent or apparently dangerous felony involving an additional malign purpose independent of physical injury to the victim killed. This claim follows from the simple idea that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one’s reasons for doing so. The article develops this idea into an expressive theory of culpability that assesses blame for …


Battered By Men, Bruised By Injustice: The Plight Of Women Who Fight Back And The Need For The Battered Women Defense In West Virginia, Jeffrey M. Shawver Apr 2008

Battered By Men, Bruised By Injustice: The Plight Of Women Who Fight Back And The Need For The Battered Women Defense In West Virginia, Jeffrey M. Shawver

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Reforming Homicide Law To Separate Guilt From Sentence: An International Gloss, Steve Coughlan Jan 2008

Reforming Homicide Law To Separate Guilt From Sentence: An International Gloss, Steve Coughlan

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article argues that Canadian homicide law is handicapped by trying to combine two contradictory approaches. In general, Canadian criminal law adopts the approach of setting out relatively rigid rules for determining guilt or innocence. That is, the Criminal Code sets out particular offences, and if the elements of an offence can be proven, then failing the presence of any defence (also relatively rigidly defined), any accused will be found guilty. The question of guilt or innocence is not individualized to the circumstances of the offender. On the other hand, sentencing decisions adopt exactly the opposite approach, and are made …