Academic

Botterell on Subjectivist Justification in Criminal Law

By Lawrence Solum

Andrew Botterell (University of Western Ontario - Faculty of Law) has posted Why We Ought to Be (Reasonable) Subjectivists About Justification (Criminal Justice Ethics, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 36-58, 200) on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

In this paper I defend the idea that justifications in criminal law are best thought of subjectively rather than objectively, although the form of subjectivism I defend relies heavily on the concept of a reasonable belief, where reasonableness is seen to have an ineliminable public component. I contrast this position with Paul Robinson's objectivist account of justification, and draw some conclusions about the role played by harm in the criminal law.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 07, 2008 (boomark / email).