Criminal Culpability after the Act

Dsouza, Mark (2015) Criminal Culpability after the Act. King's Law Journal, 26 (3). pp. 440-462.

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Abstract

I argue that the criminal law operates in distinct temporal stages, and that concept of culpability operates differently at these stages. At its initial stage, the criminal law provides advance conduct guidance to the general public on how to avoid criminality, and at this stage, culpability helps define conduct that, if performed, would prima facie be criminal. After prima facie criminal conduct occurs, the criminal law evaluates the criminality of the agent responsible. At this stage, culpability identifies blameworthy agents. I argue that it does so by reference to the conduct guidance previously offered by the criminal law, and demonstrate that this account of criminal culpability after the act explains the criminality of almost all instances of criminal wrong causation. I argue that it is fair, and not implausibly revisionist, to reject the few instances of hitherto criminal wrong causation that are not explained by this theory of culpability.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	?? B1 ?? ?? K1 ??
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	10 Dec 2015 09:16
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2022 01:06
DOI:	10.1080/09615768.2015.1104947
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2042179