Husak's primary goal is to defend a set of constraints to limit the authority of states to enact and enforce criminal offenses. In addition, Husak situates this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. This book urges the importance of this topic in the real world, while most Anglo-American legal philosophers have neglected it.

In the United States today, the use or possession of many drugs is a criminal offense. Can these criminal laws be justified? What are the best reasons to punish or not to punish drug users? These are the fundamental issues debated in this book by two prominent philosophers of law. Douglas Husak argues in favor of drug decriminalization, by clarifying the meaning of crucial terms, such as legalize, decriminalize, and drugs; and by identifying the standards by which alternative drug (...) policies should be assessed. He critically examines the reasons typically offered in favor of our current approach and explains why decriminalization is preferable. Peter de Marneffe argues against drug legalization, demonstrating why drug prohibition, especially the prohibition of heroin, is necessary to protect young people from self-destructive drug use. If the empirical assumptions of this argument are sound, he reasons, drug prohibition is perfectly compatible with our rights to liberty. (shrink)

This important book was the first serious work of philosophy to address the question: Do adults have a moral right to use drugs for recreational purposes? Many critics of the 'war on drugs' denounce law enforcement as counterproductive and ineffective. Douglas Husak argues that the 'war on drugs' violates the moral rights of adults who want to use drugs for pleasure, and that criminal laws against such use are incompatible with moral rights. This is not a polemical tract but (...) a scrupulously argued work of philosophy that takes full account of all available data concerning drug use in the United States today. The author is careful to describe the properties a recreational drug would have to possess before the state would be justified in prohibiting it. Since criminal laws against the use of recreational drugs are justified neither by the harm users cause to themselves nor by the harm users cause to each other, Professor Husak concludes that such laws are, in almost all cases, unjustified. (shrink)

The interwar decades in Poland (1918–1939) were characterized by plurality and diversity. The purpose of the paper Polish Universalism in the Interwar Period is to show the foundations of the socio-philosophical trend, which is universalism. In modern philosophy universalism was in permanent conflict with individualism, but in the interwar period the reality became more complicated. It was “collectivism”—the trend based on the cult of the State, nation, race, and class—that started to aspire to be called universalism. The author does not (...) classify these trends as universalist, and universalism itself criticized them. Different varieties of universalism can be found in the interwar period. The author indicates the literary-philosophical universalism of J.N. Miller, and the socio-conservative universalism of W.L. Jaworski, but she focuses on J. Braun’s conception of the universal subject and the idea of absolute union, and on Christian universalism,showing the importance of the emerging Polish personalism for universalist philosophy. In these proposals the author sees the germs of the later (2nd half of the 20th c.) conception of ecumenism, dialogue, and the primacy of person over things. (shrink)

A rational defense of the criminal law must provide a comprehensive theory of culpability. A comprehensive theory of culpability must resolve several difficult issues; in this article I will focus on only one. The general problem arises from the lack of a systematic account of relative culpability. An account of relative culpability would identify and defend a set of considerations to assess whether, why, under what circumstances, and to what extent persons who perform a criminal act with a given culpable (...) state are more or less blameworthy than persons who perform that act with a different culpable state. (shrink)

In this article I examine one condition a minimalist theory of criminalization might contain: the criminal law should be used only as a last resort. I discuss how this principle should be interpreted and the reasons we have to accept it. I conclude that a theory of criminalization should probably include the (appropriately construed) last resort principle. But this conclusion will prove disappointing to those who hope to employ this principle to bring about fundamental reform in the substantive criminal law. (...) I argue that the last resort principle may not help to reverse the growth of the criminal law to any degree that could not be achieved more directly and less controversially by other principles that a theory of criminalization is generally thought to include. Unless we reject others parts of conventional wisdom about crime and punishment, the application of a last resort principle is unlikely to bring about sweeping changes that theorists might have anticipated. (shrink)

I defend two objections to Tadros’s views on punishment. First, I allege that his criticisms of retributivism are persuasive only against extreme versions that provide no justificatory place for instrumentalist objectives. His attack fails against a version of retributivism that recognizes a chasm between what offenders deserve and the allthings-considered permissibility of treating offenders as they deserve. Second, I critique Tadros’s duty view – his alternative theory of punishment. Inter alia, I object that he derives principles from highly unusual examples (...) of self-defense he subsequently tries to apply to ordinary cases of punishment. (shrink)

Lately it has become a commonplace to complain about the injustice of mass incarceration. I share the sentiment that this phenomenon has been an injustice. But it also has become orthodoxy to allege that the acceptance of a retributive penal philosophy has been one of the chief factors that has brought about mass incarceration in the first place. As a self-proclaimed retributivist, I find these allegations to be troubling and unwarranted. The point of this paper is to take steps to (...) rebut them. I begin by making four conceptual points about retributivism. If I am correct, retributivism comes in countless flavors, and the particular variety to which I am most attracted can be applied to show why some punishments should be less severe than those presently imposed. Next I argue that many persons deserve less punishment than our legal system currently inflicts. Reflection about whether perpetrators should be afforded a complete or partial defense reveals retributivism to be less punitive than conventional wisdom would suggest. (shrink)

Does criminal liability require an act? -- Motive and criminal liability -- The costs to criminal theory of supposing that intentions are irrelevant to permissibility -- Transferred intent -- The nature and justifiability of nonconsummate offenses -- Strict liability, justice, and proportionality -- The sequential principle of relative culpability -- Willful ignorance, knowledge, and the equal culpability thesis : a study of the significance of the principle of legality -- Rapes without rapists : consent and reasonable mistake -- Mistake of (...) law and culpability -- On the supposed priority of justification to excuse -- Partial defenses -- The "but everybody does that!" defense -- The de minimis "defense" to criminal liability -- Why punish the deserving -- Malum prohibitum and retributivism -- Already punished enough. (shrink)

This volume collects 17 of Douglas Husak's influential essays in criminal law theory. The essays span Husak's original and provocative contributions to the central topics in the field, including the grounds of criminal liability, relative culpability, the role of defences, and the justification of punishment. The volume includes an extended introduction by the author, drawing together the themes of his work, and exploring the goals of criminal theory.

When writing Overcriminalization, I entertained a fantasy about the reaction my book might produce. I hoped that philosophers would not merely criticize my shortcomings but would join me to produce...

Commentators seemingly agree about what negligence is—and how it is contrasted from recklessness. They also appear to concur about whether particular examples (both real and hypothetical) portray negligence. I am less confident about each of these matters. I explore the distinction between recklessness and negligence by examining a type of case that has generated a good deal of critical discussion: those in which a defendant forgets that he has created a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm. Even in this limited (...) kind of example, no single perspective on blame and liability proves to be defensible. Nonetheless, a discussion of this type of case is helpful because it enables us to appreciate the difficulties in understanding the nature of negligence and the ensuing uncertainty about whether penal liability for negligence is ever warranted. (shrink)

I tackle the difficult problem of specifying how voluntary intoxication affects criminal culpability generally and recklessness in particular. I contend that the problem need not be conceptualized as an instance of actio libera in causa, namely the situation in which persons do something at t1 to culpably create the conditions of their own defense at t2. Instead, I argue that we need only consider intoxicated defendants at t2 in order to justify their punishment. In the course of defending my view, (...) I challenge conventional wisdom about both the nature of recklessness and the effects of intoxicants. I conclude by discussing a possible ground on which involuntary intoxication might be treated differently. (shrink)

У статті охарактеризовано діяльність визначальних інституцій Західної України міжвоєнного періоду - греко-католицької і православної церков, які поряд із впливовими політичними партіями та товариствами помітно вплинули на функціонування тогочасної спільноти, виступали захисниками "українських інтересів", священики брали активну участь у громадському житті й були найбільш прогресивними та освіченими представниками народу.

Gideon Yaffe is to be commended for beginning his exhaustive treatment by asking a surprisingly difficult question: Why punish attempts at all? He addresses this inquiry in the context of defending (what he calls) the transfer principle: “If a particular form of conduct is legitimately criminalized, then the attempt to engage in that form of conduct is also legitimately criminalized.” I begin by expressing a few reservations about the transfer principle itself. But my main point is that we are justified (...) in punishing attempts only when and for a different reason than Yaffe provides. I argue that attempts are legitimately punished only when they raise the risk that a harm will actually occur. To overcome the problems my explanation encounters with factually impossible attempts, I suggest an account of risk that relies on ordinary language and possible worlds. (shrink)

I attempt to describe the several costs that criminal theory would be forced to pay by adopting the view (currently fashionable among moral philosophers) that the intentions of the agent are irrelevant to determinations of whether his actions are permissible (or criminal).