Abstract
Under what circumstances should ignorance that someone is violating a moral or criminal rule preclude or lessen his moral responsibility and/or penal liability? In this chapter, I first construct a schema or framework for how to think about this issue. Quite a bit of confusion and uncertainty, I am sure, derives from a failure to understand exactly what this question is asking. I next defend some substantive views about how this question should be answered. If my defense is cogent, I conclude that a person who is ignorant that his conduct violates a moral or legal rule is almost never as blameworthy and/or deserving of as much punishment as someone who is fully aware that his behavior is wrongful and/or criminal. The best general accounts of responsibility and blameworthiness are far more receptive than positive law to allowing ignorance of wrongdoing as a complete or partial excuse.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For recent commentary that challenges my position, see Guerrero (2015).
- 3.
The various candidates are nicely described in Zimmerman (2014).
- 4.
For a challenge about whether I am correct to say that Sabine exhibits a deficiency in reason-responsiveness, see Yaffe (2018).
- 5.
For a challenge about whether persons can be reckless (as I construe it) about whether an act is wrongful, see Zimmerman (2018).
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Husak, D. (2019). Ignorance of Law: How to Conceptualize and Maybe Resolve the Issue. In: Alexander, L., Kessler Ferzan, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22811-8_14
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