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Kahan On Mistakes, Daniel Yeager
Kahan On Mistakes, Daniel Yeager
Michigan Law Review
In Ignorance of Law Is an Excuse - but Only for the Virtuous, Professor Dan Kahan reconciles what I had thought was an irreconcilable body of law. To be sure, imposing order on whether and when mistakes of law should pass as responsibility-evading accounts of untoward actions is far from light work. Yet Kahan somehow pulls it off in just twenty-seven pages. In addition to acknowledging the importance of Professor Kahan's essay, I write here to point out if not correct what might have been two oversights in his view of the meaning and operation of mistakes. First, Kahan never …
Reply: Is Ignorance Of Fact An Excuse Only For The Virtuous?, Dan M. Kahan
Reply: Is Ignorance Of Fact An Excuse Only For The Virtuous?, Dan M. Kahan
Michigan Law Review
Professor Yeager's thoughtful response to my essay has convinced me that there is indeed a connection worth noting between the mistake of law doctrine and the mistake of fact doctrine. Yeager suggests that my position on mistake of law reduces to the view that someone who would be guilty of a "lesser wrong" were things as he perceived them to be may be punished for the "greater wrong" that he actually commits - a conception of mistake of fact that has provoked fierce denunciation from commentators. But I would in fact put things slightly differently: under both doctrines courts excuse …