The Paternalistic Principle

In this paper, I critique one aspect of Simester and von Hirsch’s, Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs—their recognition of harm and offence principles, but failure to construct a paternalistic principle, despite their willingness to countenance some small measure of criminal paternalism. Construction of such a principle would have clarified the problems of as well as the limits to criminalising paternalism.     

In Defense of “Pure” Legal Moralism

In this paper I argue that Joel Feinberg was wrong to suppose that liberals must oppose any criminalization of “harmless immorality”. The problem with a theory that permits criminalization only on the basis of his harm and offense principles is that it is underinclusive, ruling out laws that most liberals believe are justified. One objection (Arthur Ripstein’s) is that Feinberg’s theory is unable to account for the criminalization of harmless personal grievances. Another (Larry Alexander’s and Robert George’s) is that it cannot account for public decency laws. I shall reject both of these underinclusiveness objections in favor of one that focuses on the “free floating evil” of corpse desecration. Liberals need “pure” legal moralism (PLM) to explain their support for a criminal ban on mistreatment of the dead. I also argue that while deterrence is plausibly regarded as the primary rationale for criminalizing and punishing wrongs like murder or rape, it is not plausibly regarded as any part of the rationale for criminalizing free floating evils. The point of punishing corpse desecrators has to be either retribution or the promotion of virtue/discouraging of vice. Finally, I consider Feinberg’s reason for rejecting all PLM, namely, that competent adults have a right to personal sovereignty or autonomy, and the state’s duty to respect that right trumps the desirability of punishing or reducing the vice associated with harmless immorality. I argue that Feinberg’s argument here fails because it exaggerates the right’s strength and scope.     

Comment on Andreas von Hirsch: The Roles of Harm and Wrongdoing in Criminalisation Theory

Whereas liberals tend to emphasize harm as the decisive criterion for legitimizing criminalisation, moralists take a qualified notion of wrongfulness as sufficient even when no harm is at hand. This comment takes up Andreas von Hirsch’s “dual element approach” requiring both harm and wrongfulness as necessary conditions for criminalisation and argues that Joel Feinberg’s account of harming as violation of moral rights is perfectly compatible with it. Subsequently, two issues from the liberalism-moralism debate on criminalisation are examined: The difficulty of how to determine wrongfulness beyond the scope of harming, and the so far disregarded question of whether the democratic legislator is free within the framework of constitution to criminalise whatever conduct he wants to prevent irrespective of philosophical constraints.     

Harm and Wrongdoing in Criminalisation Theory

Contemporary theories of criminalisation address, with varying emphasis, themes concerning the harmfulness and the wrongfulness of the conduct. In his article for the present issue, Antony Duff relies chiefly on notions of wrongfulness as the basis for his proposed criminalisation doctrines; whereas in their 2011 volume on criminalisation, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch invoke both wrongfulness and harmfulness as prerequisites for prohibiting conduct. The present article assesses the comparative merits of these approaches, and argues in favour of the latter, two-element perspective. In this article, the author puts forward a number of reasons suggesting why the two-element approach (of wrongfulness and harm) is preferable. These reasons include, firstly, an inductive argument—that the kinds of wrongful conduct for which criminalisation seems a plausible response are those that include an element of harm or risk of harm. Secondly, a defining role for the state is one of resource-protection: of safeguarding the means and resources through which citizens can live good lives. Thus the concept of citizens’ living resources—and the related conception of harm—should be made a constitutive and explicit element of criminalisation theory, rather than subsuming resource-protection under a general rubric of wrongfulness. Thirdly, a two-element approach provides reciprocal limiting principles concerning the scope of criminalisation. One can, for example, employ wrongfulness requirements to limit the criminalisation of conduct that has remote harmful consequences; and, conversely, use a harmfulness requirement as means for restricting the criminalisation of wrongful acts.     

What is the Harm Principle For?

In their excellent monograph, Crimes, Harms and Wrongs, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch argue for an account of legitimate criminalisation based on wrongfulness, the Harm Principle and the Offence Principle, while they reject an independent anti-paternalism principle. To put it at its simplest my aim in the present paper is to examine the relationship between ‘the harms’ and ‘the wrongs’ of the authors’ title. I begin by comparing the authors’ version of the Harm and Offence Principle with some other influential accounts. After examining the (considerable) role wrongfulness plays in their work, I ask what there is left for their Harm and Offence Principles to do. In the light of the understanding and foundations of the Harm and Offence Principles proposed by the authors, I suggest that the answer is little or nothing. The wrongfulness constraint the authors place on their Offence Principle comes close to swallowing it up entirely. Furthermore the part of their Offence Principle that is not thus swallowed by wrongfulness leaves the account with a commitment that is probably best dropped. As far as their Harm Principle is concerned I suggest that the authors’ account of ‘harm’ is so broad that it lacks the resources to distinguish harm-based reasons from wrongfulness- or immorality-based reasons in any principled way. Among other things, I ask in this context, first, whether one can be harmed as one’s character deteriorates and, secondly, whether one is harmed by virtue of the serious wrong one does to another. What really drives the authors’ account of legitimate criminalisation, I believe, is wrongfulness together with an important, amorphous set of potential defeating conditions. They themselves accept such a picture so far as paternalism is concerned. I conclude that their account, which I think has considerable force, would lose little of any significance were their Harm and Offence Principles simply excised. More generally I suspect that a strong role for wrongfulness in an account of legitimate criminalisation is likely to put into serious question the plausibility of an independent principled role for harm and offence.     

The Limits of the Harm Principle

The harm principle, understood as the normative requirement that conduct should be criminalized only if it is harmful, has difficulty in dealing with those core cases of criminal wrongdoing that can occur without causing any direct harm. Advocates of the harm principle typically find it implausible to hold that these core cases should not be crimes and so usually seek out some indirect harm that can justify criminalizing the seemingly harmless conduct. But this strategy justifies criminalization of a wide range of conduct on the basis of the fear, worry, and anxiety it generates among those who are not the direct victims of the conduct, and thereby undermines the limiting role of the harm principle by permitting the very move it was meant to prevent: the criminalization of harmless conduct on the ground of others’ feelings about it. The best way to avoid this dilemma is to recognize that people have rights, operating independently of the harm principle, to be treated in certain ways just because they are persons. The existence of such rights provides a ground for both criminalizing conduct and limiting the scope of criminalization because these rights point both to conduct that people must be permitted to engage in (regardless of its harmful effects) and conduct that might well be criminalized (though it is not harmful). A complete account of criminal law will therefore require the harm principle to work together with an independent account of rights.     

Criminalization and the Collateral Consequences of Conviction

Convicted offenders face a host of so-called “collateral” consequences: formal measures such as legal restrictions on voting, employment, housing, or public assistance, as well as informal consequences such as stigma, family tensions, and financial insecurity. These consequences extend well beyond an offender’s criminal sentence itself and are frequently more burdensome than the sentence. This essay considers two respects in which collateral consequences may be relevant to the question of what the state should, or may, criminalize. First, they may be relevant according to specific accounts of criminalization, including plausible versions of the harm principle and legal moralism. Second, they may be relevant to the legitimacy of state criminalization more generally. Thus for legal theorists concerned with the issue of legitimate criminalization, normative questions raised by collateral consequences are of central importance.     

非法实施发明专利入罪的认识误区及克服

加强专利权保护是形势使然。专利权具有无形性、公开性和非竞争性,容易受到侵害。专利民事司法保护存在刚性不足、赔偿数额认定难等局限。专利行政执法对效率的追求造成程序监督弱化。刑法具有制裁手段的严厉性和“二次保障性”特征,遏制专利侵权优势明显。以专利权系私权、专利权具有不确定性、专利案件审理存在技术性难题为由反对非法实施发明专利侵权入罪的主张并不成立。专利刑事立法应当从“权利救济”转向“法益救济”,重构有关专利犯罪客体,增设非法实施发明专利罪,把故意侵犯发明专利且情节严重的行为规定为犯罪。     

Criminalization,Legitimacy, and Welfare

A standard view about criminal law distinguishes between two kinds of offenses, “mala in se” and “mala prohibita.” This view also corresponds to a distinction between two bases for criminalization: certain acts should be criminalized because they are moral wrongs; other acts may be criminalized for the sake of promoting overall welfare. This paper aims to show two things: first, that allowing for criminalization for the sake of promoting welfare renders the category of wrongfulness crimes largely redundant. Second, and more importantly, accepting welfare as a legitimate ground for criminalization implies a certain view about legitimate state action, which makes criminalization for wrongfulness more difficult to justify. If I am right, the view that keeps the two categories of criminalization as largely separate is untenable. I conclude with some remarks about the advantages of welfare (and not wrongfulness) as the basis for criminalization.     

The Significance of Transferred Intent

The doctrine of transferred intent (or transferred “malice” in England) generally provides that if A attempts to harm B but, because of bad aim, misses and accidentally causes the same harm to befall C, A’s harmful intent vis-à-vis B is transferred to C, thus rendering A guilty of intentionally harming C. Commentators acknowledge the doctrine to be a legal fiction, but they differ regarding whether the fiction produces just results, some believing it does, others believing that A is guilty at most of attempting to harm B rather than intentionally harming C. Commentators who agree that the fiction produces just results nevertheless differ regarding whether the fiction should be retained or whether A’s intent to harm “a” person, in this case, B, is the only intent that signifies for crimes of intentional harm, regardless of whom A eventually harms. Doug Husak sought to achieve reflective equilibrium between intuition and theory regarding bad-aim cases by proposing in 1996 that A be punished for attempting to harm B (rather than for harming C) but sentenced as if he had harmed B. I once believed that Husak was correct. But I now have doubts, in part because Husak, along with others, cannot explain why the strength of people’s intuitions regarding A’s responsibility in bad-aim cases depends upon (1) C’s being a reasonably foreseeable victim, and (2) C’s being harmed by the same threat of force that A initially unleashed against B. I argue that one cannot achieve reflective equilibrium in bad-aim cases without inquiring into why resulting harm matters in criminal law, and that when one does, one discovers that just as people’s intuitions regarding whether intentional harms are proximate depend upon how resulting harms occur, so, too, people’s intuitions regarding whether an actor is guilty of intentional harm depend upon how resulting harm comes about.     

论主要罪过

在结果加重犯、结合犯,以及行为人对于结果发生难以预测的特殊犯罪中,要认定行为人究竟具备故意还是过失的罪过,可能比较困难。对此,刑法学界先后提出了复合罪过说、客观的超过要素概念等解决方法。但是,这些理论是否合理,还值得推敲。本文提出的新方法是:先从“事实上”确定这些特殊犯罪中的行为人究竟有多少个罪过;然后从“规范”意义上确定在这些罪过中,哪一个是次要罪过,哪一个是主要罪过,最终确定的这个主要罪过就是这些特殊犯罪的罪过形式。“主要罪过说”的提出,有助于解决刑法学上一直存在的罪过难题。     

Jurisprudence and Communication: Secular and Religious

In considering Van Schooten’s study of the Eric O. case (s.1), I ask whether the different approaches taken by the two different “legal institutions”—the prosecuting authorities on the one hand, the courts on the other—are reflective of different images of warfare (a semantic difference) or of the different images each group holds of its own role (a pragmatic difference). If we consider these two “legal institutions” as distinct semiotic groups (s.2), is there an inevitable “communication deficit” (Van Schooten) between them (and the public) and how does this relate to the Hartian account of such a “crisis in communication” (s.3)? I agree with Van Schooten about the role of underlying images in the construction of legal sense, and relate this to the issue of intuitional judgment, both in and outside the law (s.4). I then turn to comparable issues which arise in my other research area, Jewish law, which reflects quite different ideological premises (s.5), reviewing the original (biblical) conception of the (intuitive) role and functions of judges (s.5A), decision-making, justification and consequentialist ethics in postbiblical Jewish law (s.5B), and the conclusions drawn, not least for the pragmatics of communication, in a recent research study on the wife’s rights in divorce. Paradoxically, I argue (s.5C), that the system rests at base on trust rather than objective truth. But trust, too, is a form of meaning, and susceptible to semiotic analysis. I suggest, in conclusion (s.6), that this is an issue which should be treated more seriously in the theory of secular law and legal communication.     

人权的内核——兼论“以人为本”的宪法涵义

宪法上基本权利的保障有其基础理论和核心内容,西方实证宪法和宪政理论都肯定“人的尊严”构成了人权的内核。人的尊严是人权宪法保障的哲学依据,是人权生长的原点,是对基本权利限制的限制。“国家尊重和保障人权”是一种规范性表述,而非描述性表述,其中蕴含着一定的价值判断,表明“以人为本”已经从实证法形式上升为国家理念,构成了我国宪政制度建构的根本,是借鉴世界其他国家宪政和人权理论与制度的坚固基础。     

贪利性犯罪死刑正当性的犯罪学追问

贪利性犯罪的死刑是现阶段我国在死刑控制问题上面临的一个突出问题。目前,理论上有关贪利性犯罪死刑正当性的思考,大多局限于法理或伦理上的一般性思辨,而缺乏从事实层面对“为什么对贪利性犯罪不应当配置死刑”这一核心问题的深入追问。基于死刑与贪利性犯罪的社会危害性特点具有不相容性、死刑与贪利性犯罪的原因具有不匹配性和死刑于贪利性犯罪无任何积极功效的分析,利用死刑与贪利性犯罪作斗争,在反犯罪策略上是一种缺乏事实根据的非理性选择。为此,在立法尚未改变之前,理性控制贪利性犯罪死刑的司法适用,是时代赋予司法者的政治和道义责任。     

我们需要什么样的民法总则--与德国民法比较

我国民法体系与德国民法体系有重大差异,根本原因是立法理念和思路不同。德国民法体系是以权利为核心构建的,所反映的法律关系理论属于“权利关系”阶段的理论。我国民法是以法律关系为核心构建的,所反映的法律关系理论属于“权利义务责任关系”阶段的理论。从立法技术上看,我国民法体系与德国民法体系有重大差异的根源在于,民法上责任的概念和内涵及责任与义务的关系有重大差异。由于《德国民法典》是以权利为核心构建的,请求权在民法中占有十分重要的地位。我国民法体系是以法律关系为核心构建的,体现为以权利———义务———责任为主线,我国民法上请求权的功能与德国民法上请求权的功能不同。     

The Advent of Preventive Criminal Law: An Erosion of the Traditional Criminal Law?

Criminal law in contemporary societies is undergoing a transformation or according to some, even a paradigm shift. The reach of criminal law is now extended to terrains that were hitherto immune to criminalization. These new forms of criminalization. in post-heroic risk societies are targeting conduct well before it causes a harm. The prime examples of this preventive criminalization. are pre-inchoate offences, crimes of possession of “innocent” objects and crimes of abstract endangerment. The common trait of these offences is that they enable the so-called preponing criminal liability (Vorverlagerung), through which the earliest of preparatory acts, neutral, everyday activities such as merely standing around or merely possessing may well fall within the reach of criminal law. This phenomenon is now taking place virtually everywhere considered by many as an erosion of the traditional post-enlightenment criminal law model. Yet, proponents of the preventive criminal law are suggesting that such laws are needed in order to avert risks (terrorist attacks, for instance) while they are at preparation phase. There is, therefore, a tension between the traditional criminal law and new security interests that pose new questions which need to be addressed by a meticulous analysis. In this article I shall try to deal with following questions: Whether these preventive offences are inherently incompatible with the rule of law? How far a law-abiding nation can go in criminalizing preparatory acts? Are there any promising constraining constitutional principles or instances that delimit preventive criminalization?     

Human Rights: Existential,Not Metaphysical

My paper consists of four sections. The first is concerned with the distinction and connection between fundamental and human rights. Here I shall just introduce a few conceptual notions and definitions that are more or less widely used, but that may help us to frame the issue and better focus on the most relevant question of the foundation or justification of human rights. In the second and third sections I will present what I believe to be the four fundamental normative situations that shape our understanding and use of human rights. In the second section attention will focus on what in my opinion is the most basic of these four normative situations, which I call the “existential” situation. This is intended to offer a strong foundation for human rights as “not metaphysical,” without appealing to or relying on heavy metaphysical assumptions. I will try to stick more or less to an argumentative strategy based on common sense. The third section, dealing with the three other normative situations, will to some extent be an exercise in eclecticism, trying to combine different approaches to (and schools of thought on) the question of normativity. Here eclecticism will not be trivial, or at least I hope not. In the fourth and final section I will briefly conclude with a general overview on the issue of the “existence” of normativity and human rights.     

The Restricting Claims Principle Revisited: Grounding the Means Principle on the Agent–Patient Divide

In an earlier article, I introduced the “restricting claims principle” (RCP) to explain what is right about the means principle: the idea that it is harder to justify causing or allowing someone to suffer harm if using him as a means than if causing or allowing harm as a side effect. The RCP appeals to the idea that claims not to be harmed as a side effect push to restrict an agent from doing what she would otherwise be free to do for herself or others, given an appropriate account of her baseline freedom. Claims not to be harmed as a means are not in that way ‘‘restricting.’’ The original RCP relied on a counterfactual account of the agent’s baseline freedom: What could the agent permissibly do if the patient were not present? I argue here that that counterfactual baseline fails. The revised RCP relies instead on a ‘‘toolkit baseline’’: Do the patient claims concern the property the agent needs to use? This toolkit baseline reflects the different ways that agents relate to others: as fellow agents with whom they divide up the resources of the world, and as patients who might be affected by their actions. The toolkit baseline, resting on this agent-patient divide, provides a superior account of an agent’s baseline freedom, and a better account of the moral ground for the means principle     

被害人辨认错误及其防范

被害人辨认错误是导致刑事错案发生的主要原因之一。被害人“身临其境”和“身受其害”的当事人身份，决定了被害人体验案件事实和辨认犯罪嫌疑人存在局限性，容易出现某些“诚实”的错误。分析被害人辨认错误的成因，进一步完善辨认规则，健全辨认程序，有助于提高被害人辨认的准确性和可信性，防范错误辨认，保护被害人权利。