The Problem Of Collective Responsibility

In Chapter 1, a basic analysis of the nature of individual (retrospective) liability responsibility was set forth, and was taken as uncontroversial at least insofar as the basic conditions of responsibility are concerned. From that analysis, I now seek to build a notion of collective moral responsibility1 for use in the criminal law. Indeed, just as the analysis of individual moral responsibility was used to determine the extent to which an individual moral agent is punishable, the analysis of this chapter will seek to serve as the conceptual means by which to determine the extent to which a collective might be “punishable,” i.e., forced by the state to compensate parties they harm wrongfully.

It has been argued that “the idea of collective moral responsibility seems not only to be theoretically respectable but of great practical importance. If so, it is important that it receive a warmer welcome from philosophers than it has in the past.”2 Indeed, some keen philosophical minds have provided the respectability that collective responsibility theory deserves, and this chapter is an attempt to make further progress in that general direction.