Abstract
In Complicity and the Rwandan Genocide (2010b), Larry May argues that complicity can be the basis for criminal liability if two conditions are met: First, the person’s actions or inactions must contribute to the harm in question, and secondly, the person must know that his actions or inactions risk contributing to this harm. May also states that the threshold for guilt for criminal liability is higher than for moral responsibility. I agree with this latter claim, but I think that it casts doubt on May’s account of criminal liability, particular in so-called performance cases in which low-level participants merely fail to help. This is because it is far from clear that passive non-helpers are morally responsible for their participation in widespread harms. Situationism purports to show that passive bystanders typically are not morally responsible for their role in such harms, because they were behaving reasonably subject to the constraints they faced. In this paper, I assess this claim, and defend it on the basis of O. W. Holmes’ standard of the reasonable person as a guide to judging criminal complicity. Finally, I provide a situationist account of the Rwandan genocide, which focuses on the systemic causes and primary perpetrators of the genocide, rather than low-level participants.
Notes
In this case, the defendant was found criminally negligent after building a haystack on the border of the plaintiff’s property, and ignoring repeated warnings that the haystack was in danger of catching fire, saying that he ‘would chance it.’ Predictably, the haystack caught fire and destroyed the plaintiff’s buildings. (1837) 3 Bing. N.C. 468.
References
Harman, Gilbert. 1999. Moral philosophy meets social psychology. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99: 315–331.
Hintjens, Helen M. 1999. Explaining the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The Journal of Modern African Studies 37: 241–286.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 2009 [1881]. In The common law, ed. Stephen L. Carter. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.
Lavallee, R.V. 1990. 1 S.C.R. 852. In Canadian cases in the philosophy of law, 2nd edn., ed. J.E. Bickenback. Toronto: Broadview Press (2007).
May, Larry. 2010a. Genocide: A normative account. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
May, Larry. 2010b. Complicity and the Rwandan genocide. Res Publica 16: 135–152.
Milgram, Stanley. 1963. Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67 (4): 371–378.
Philips, Michael. 1987. Rationality, responsibility and blame. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17: 141–153.
Ross, Lee, and Richard E. Nisbett. 1991. The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Sarkin, Jeremy. 2001. The tension between justice and reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, human rights, due process and the role of the gacaca courts in dealing with the genocide. Journal of African Law 45: 143–172.
Smith, Eliot R., and Diane M. Mackie. 2000. Social psychology. Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Stone, Peter. 2009. Rationality, intelligibility, and interpretation. Rationality and Society 21: 35–58.
Vaughan v. Menlove. 1837. 3 Bing NC 468
Zimbardo, Philip. 2007. The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ciurria, M. Complicity and Criminal Liability in Rwanda: A Situationist Critique. Res Publica 17, 411–419 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9157-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9157-z