Capacity and culpability

Thesis

How should the criminal law account for defendants’ incapacities? It’s often claimed that some incapacities make individuals less culpable for wrongdoing. But what follows if this is true? Like many others, I claim that the criminal law ought not to convict offenders disproportionately to their culpability. Thus, if incapacities render individuals less culpable, then the criminal law ought to account for that lowered culpability. But rather than accepting this ‘culpability principle’ under the guise of non-instrumentalist retributivism, I instead derive it from instrumental considerations regarding fair labelling.

Next, I survey how the law accounts for incapacities. I generate and populate a novel threefold taxonomy of incapacity rules, comprising what I call incapacity doctrines, incapacity relativisations, and counterfactual incapacity relativisations. I then defend the use of these incapacity rules from certain critiques, including from those who argue for the abolition of some incapacity rules. Many incapacity rules are formulated not (only) by reference to their target incapacities, but (also) by reference to certain proxy attributes, and in particular to the relevant incapacity’s aetiology. I defend the use of such proxies but critique those rules which require proof of aetiological proxies in addition to proof of the underlying incapacity.

The final chapters ask why and how incapacities exculpate. I defend the widely accepted view that incapacities exculpate if they make defendants less able to conform to the requirements of a norm. Finally, I ask what it means for one to be incapable of something. I argue that we cannot rely only on metaphysical considerations when ascribing incapacities for the attribution culpability.

Authors: Manwaring, J

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Capacity; Crime; Incapacities
• Subjects: Legal philosophy; Criminal law