Responsibility and Justificatory Defenses
Criminal Law and Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 97-110, 2017
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Legal Research Paper No. 16-13
16 Pages Posted: 27 Oct 2015 Last revised: 4 Feb 2017
Date Written: October 27, 2015
Abstract
Criminal prohibitions typically forbid harming people. Justificatory defenses, such as lesser evil, justifying necessity and justifying self-defense, provide exceptions to such prohibitions if certain conditions are met. One common condition is that the agent is not responsible for the conflict. The questions whether justificatory defenses should include such a condition, and if so what should be its content, are controversial. I argue that responsibility for a conflict counts against protecting the responsible person at the expense of a non-responsible or a less-responsible person, but that this consideration is not necessarily decisive but rather might be outweighed by another consideration, for example in favor of preventing the more serious harm. I conclude that responsibility for the conditions of justificatory defenses raises a unique question whose proper resolution should be based on the interaction of several general considerations.
Keywords: Responsibility, Justification, Defenses, Lesser Evil, Self-defense
JEL Classification: K00, K14
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation