PHIL30260 Philosophy of Law

Academic Year 2020/2021

This module will concern the philosophy of criminal law. The central philosophical concept is that of moral responsibility. What does it mean to be responsible, to be held responsible, to take responsibility, and to deny responsibility? When the police arrest a suspect, and the judge tries a defendant, they ask: did she do it (the so-called actus reus)? If she did, in what spirit did she do it – intentionally or recklessly, or was it an honest mistake (the so-called mens rea)? And if she did it intentionally, does she have an excuse or a justification for what she did? Ultimately the trial is attempting to determine the precise degree of guilt (culpability), and this will allow it to punish the defendant appropriately (or to acquit her).

Generally, we will focus on examples from the English criminal law, with only occasional references to Ireland. This is because there is so much more academic scholarship about the English law, and because Irish criminal law mostly follows English anyway. (We will also make occasional comparisons with other jurisdictions, e.g. the American Model Penal Code.)

This is a philosophy module, not a law module or a criminology module. Importantly, it is not Jurisprudence, which is about the nature of law and institutional rules. In our module, the emphasis is less on the detail of the substantive law and institutions and more on a philosophical exploration of legal concepts (e.g. responsibility, justice) and/or an ethical critique of existing laws and institutions.