Owning Outcomes: On Intervening Causes, Thin Skulls, and Fault-undifferentiated Crimes

Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 89-114

  Brudner, Alan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85007566473     PISSN: 08418209     EISSN: 20564260     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0841820900001703     Document Type: Review

References (53)

1. Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), para. 110 [hereafter Ph.R.].
2. H. L. A. Hart, "The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" Proceedings of the Arist. Soc'y, New Series, XLDC (London: Harrison, 1949) at 188;
3. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966) at 678.
4. See A. Ashworth, "Taking the Consequences" in S. Shute, J. Gardner, & J. Horder, eds., Action and Value in Criminal Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) 107;
5. Belief, Intent and Criminal Liability" in J. Eekelaar & J. Bell, eds., Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (Third Series) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) 13;
6. B. Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) at 20;
7. T. Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) at 24.
8. Queen v. Jordan (1956), 40 Cr. App. R. 152 8. For a discussion of this aspect of the novus actus doctrine
9. D. Galloway, "Causation in Criminal Law: Interventions, Thin Skulls and Lost Chances" (1989) 14 Queen's L. J. 71,75-76.
10. T. Christlieb, "Why Superseding Cause Analysis Should be Abandoned" (1993) 72 Texas L. Rev. 161, 162-169.
11. M. Zimmerman, "Intervening Agents and Moral Responsibility" (1985) 35 Phil. Quart. 347.
12. This is not to say that the novus actus reasoning alone explains the intuitively correct result. If the policeman's killing of the robber was justified, then there is no unlawful outcome for which the accomplice can be held criminally responsible.
13. H.L.A Hart & T. Honore, Causation in the Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
14. In the first edition, the rule was stated as follows: "the free, deliberate and informed act or omission of a human being, intended to produce the consequence which is in fact produced, negatives causal connection." H.L.A Hart & T. Honored Causation in the Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 129.
15. We shall see that, though overbroad, this formulation comes closer to the truth than the revised one. For a critique of the earlier formulation, see J. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 152-86 20.
16. We can eliminate any other theory of exculpation by supposing that the policeman's act was unjustified (though excused) because the deceased had a duress justification for joining the robbery. So there is now an unjustified homicide for which the surviving robber is, according to the Hart-Honor6 theory, responsible.
17. Perhaps a caveat is in order here. In looking to the property relation for clues about imputation, I am far from claiming that the analogy between the two relations is perfect and that we can therefore simply "apply" the assumptions underlying property to resolve problems of criminal responsibility.
18. I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) at 68-69.
19. J. L. Scroeder, "The Vestal and the Fasces: Property and the Feminine in Law and Psychoanalysis" (1995) 16 Cardozo L. Rev. 805 at 81 On. 23 29. See Hegel, Ph.R. para.
20. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals at 63: "Freedom .. insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity." 30.
21. Robert Nozick has famously posed this alternative as one between assimilating the object to one's labour or dissipating one's labour in the object; see Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 174-75.
22. Hegel makes the point succinctly: "Occupancy makes the matter of the thing my property, since matter in itself does not belong to itself." Ph.R. para. 52;
23. Locke expresses a similar idea in theistic language: "The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." The Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952) at 17.
24. F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 5-6.
25. A. Brudner, The Unity of the Common Law: Studies in Hegelian Jurisprudence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) at ch. 6.
26. in addition to the works cited in n.3, "Sharpening the Subjective Element in Criminal Liability" in R. A. Duff & N. Simmonds, eds., Philosophy and the Criminal Law (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984) at 79-89.
27. B. Chapman, "Agency and Contingency: The Case of Criminal Attempts" (1988) 38 U.T.L.J. 355.
28. R. A. Duff, "Acting, Trying, and Criminal Liability" in Shute et al., eds., supra note 3 at 83-88;
29. Nagel, supra note 3 at 35.
30. M. S. Moore, Act and Crime (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) atch. 11.
31. Hegel's Science of Logic, trans. W. H. Johnston & L. G. Struthers (London: Allen & Unwin, 1929) II, 375.
32. The Logic of Hegel, trans. W. Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892) at paras. 206-09.
33. see D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) at 3-19.
34. But see supra note 36.
35. Hegel, Ph.R. paras. 118, 120.
36. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving at 30-37;
37. T. Nagel, Mortal Questions at 24-38;
38. B. Williams, Moral Luck at 20-39;
39. M. Zimmerman, "Luck and Moral Responsibility" (1987) 97 Ethics 374;
40. A. Ripstein, "Equality, Luck, and Responsibility" (1994) 23 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 3.
41. This is what occurred in pagett v. The Queen (1983), 76 Cr. App. R. 279.
42. R. A. Duff, Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) at 99.
43. J. Hornsby, "On What's Intentionally Done" in Shute et al., eds., supra note 3 at 69-73.
44. This rule had already become well entrenched in precedent if not in reason; see R. v. Larkin (1942), 29 Cr. App. R. 18 (C.A.);
45. R. v. Church, [1966] 1 Q.B. 59 (C.A.);
46. D.RP. v. Daley (1978), 69 Cr. App. R. 39 (P.C.).
47. deal later with the objection that differences in blameworthiness for outcomes can be reflected at the sentencing stage.
48. Though this is what seems to have occurred in R. v. Holland (1841), 2 Mood & R. 351.
49. To the extent that only a reasonably mistaken belief in consent will absolve from sexual assault, the latter is a crime undifferentiated as between intentional, reckless, and negligent assaults.
50. Vaillancourt v. The Queen, [1987] 2 S.C.R. 636.
51. McKinney's New York Criminal Law Pamphlet (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing, 1991) at 487-826.
52. As McLachlin, J. argued in Creighton; see above note 47 at 48-49. See also Sopinka J.'s dissenting judgment in R. v. Daviault, [1994] 3 S.C.R. 63 at 120.
53. Alan Brudner, "Proportionality, Stigma and Discretion" (1996) 38Crim. L. Q. 302 314-17.