Abstract
Whereas liberals tend to emphasize harm as the decisive criterion for legitimizing criminalisation, moralists take a qualified notion of wrongfulness as sufficient even when no harm is at hand. This comment takes up Andreas von Hirsch’s “dual element approach” requiring both harm and wrongfulness as necessary conditions for criminalisation and argues that Joel Feinberg’s account of harming as violation of moral rights is perfectly compatible with it. Subsequently, two issues from the liberalism-moralism debate on criminalisation are examined: The difficulty of how to determine wrongfulness beyond the scope of harming, and the so far disregarded question of whether the democratic legislator is free within the framework of constitution to criminalise whatever conduct he wants to prevent irrespective of philosophical constraints.
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Notes
S. von Hirsch (2013), Harms and Wrongs doing as Reciprocal Constraints.
von Hirsch (2013), Introduction.
von Hirsch (2013), Introduction.
von Hirsch (2013), text at fn. 19.
von Hirsch (2013), Harm and ‘Resources’.
von Hirsch (2013), Harm and Wrong doing as Reciprocal Constraints.
I shall focus on this point below.
von Hirsch (2013), Introduction.
In German criminal law, this problem is discussed under the label of “Taeter hinter demTaeter” (perpetrator behind the perpetrator). To be held criminally responsible, the indirect originator of a harmful act can be treated as perpetrator only if he somehow dominated the immediate actor.
In Harm to Others, Feinberg includes a chapter on “Fairly Imputing Harms” (Feinberg [1984], 218 ff.), but it only comprehends sketches concerning special cases of harming.
Feinberg (1984), 36.
Feinberg (1984), 9.
Feinberg (1984), 110 f.
von Hirsch (2013), Introduction.
Cf. Feinberg (1984), 9.
Paradigmatic Moore’s confidence in emotions as reliable indicators for the objective immorality of an act: See Moore (1997), 183.
Concerning the notion of pure moralism see Feinberg (1988), 8.
See Moore (1997), 127-138, 183.
Regarding the mentioned three groups of wrongful actions see Duff (2013), Criminalisation and Wrong doing.
Duff (2013), text at fn. 38.
Duff (2013), Concluding Comments.
Duff (2013), Concluding Comments.
Cf. Duff (2007), 88.
Duff (2013), Concluding Comments.
Here it must be added that the German legislator is meant to be free in deciding what is a Rechtsgut.
Bundesverfassungsgericht, Entscheidungen, vol. 120, p. 224 ff., Rn. 35. This is the incest-decision already mentioned by von Hirsch.
BVerfGE 120, 224 ff., Rn. 38 f.
Gaerditz (2010), 362.
At least if the respective legislation complies with the principle of proportionality—a condition the Bundesverfassungsgericht set up for the legitimacy of any state act, but never used to declare a criminal provision unconstitutional.
References
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Seher, G. Comment on Andreas von Hirsch: The Roles of Harm and Wrongdoing in Criminalisation Theory. Criminal Law, Philosophy 8, 257–264 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-013-9205-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-013-9205-1