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The distinction between the criminal fault elements of recklessness and negligence is one of Anglo-American criminal law's key distinctions. It is a distinction with practical significance, as many serious crimes require at least recklessness and cannot be committed negligently. The distinction is standardly marked by awareness. Recklessness requires awareness that one's conduct carries a risk of harm. Negligence only requires that one ought to have been aware that one's conduct carried such a risk, even if one was in fact unaware of this. But should the recklessness/negligence distinction be marked by awareness of risk, or by something else? Does a defendant's awareness of risk really have the normative significance to mark such a distinction? In this paper, I answer these questions by discussing a challenge to this 'standard account' of the recklessness/negligence distinction raised by the work of Antony Duff, who defends an alternative, non-awareness-based model of the recklessness/negligence distinction. I will argue that, although Duff's alternative model fails, seeing how it goes wrong helps us see how awareness genuinely does have the right kind of normative significance to mark the distinction between recklessness and negligence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seem to be responsible for our beliefs in a distinctively epistemic way. We often hold each other to account for the beliefs that we hold. We do this by criticising other believers as 'gullible' or 'biased', and by trying to persuade others to revise their beliefs. But responsibility for belief looks hard to understand because we seem to lack control over our beliefs. In this paper, I argue that we can make progress in our understanding of responsibility for belief by thinking about it in parallel with another kind of responsibility: legal responsibility for criminal negligence. Specifically, I argue that that a popular account of responsibility for belief, which grounds it in belief's reasons-responsiveness, faces a problem analogous to one faced by H.L.A. Hart's influential capacity-based account of culpability. This points towards a more promising account of responsibility of belief, though, if we draw on accounts of negligence that improve on Hart's. Broadly speaking, the account of negligence that improves on Hart's account grounds culpability in a (lack of) concern for others' interests, whereas my account of epistemic responsibility grounds responsibility for belief in a (lack of) concern for the truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I advance a culpability-based justification for command responsibility. Command responsibility has attracted powerful, principled criticisms, particularly that its controversial 'should have known' fault standard may breach the culpability principle. Scholars are right to raise such questions, as a negligence-based mode of accessory liability seems to chafe against our analytical constructs. However, I argue, in three steps, that the intuition of justice underlying the doctrine is sound. An upshot of this analysis is that the 'should have known' standard in the ICC Statute, rather than being shunned, should be embraced. While Tribunal jurisprudence shied away from criminal negligence due to culpability concerns, I argue that the 'should have known' standard actually maps better onto personal culpability than the rival formulations developed by the Tribunals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Attempted negligence' is a category of criminal offense that many jurists and philosophers have law have deemed conceptually incoherent. In his Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law, Gideon Yaffe challenges this dismissal, anchoring his argument in cases of what he calls 'mental self-management' in which agents plan to bring about that they perform unintentional actions at a later time. He plausibly argues that mental self-management-type attempted negligence is possible. However, his account raises the question whether such attempts can be successful: whether, in other words, attempts to perform unintentional actions at a later time could issue in actions that are, indeed, unintentional. Intuitively, at least, it would seem that we should answer in the affirmative. However, that answer poses problems for a plausible and widely-held account of intentional action. Al Mele, responding to Yaffe's account, has pointed out this problem without, I think, providing a satisfactory resolution. I propose another way of vindicating the possibility of successful attempted negligence with small, if significant, revision to the standard view of intentional action. In these cases, I argue, agents fail to act intentionally because they render themselves, through their acts of self-management, unaware that they are successfully executing their intentions. Moreover, I argue that these agents' intentions to bring about that they perform unintentional actions do not commit them to acting intentionally because of the nature of intentions to bring about actions. I offer an account of the intention to bring about that one A's and defend it against some objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In standard models on negligence rules, due care levels can be used for fine-tuning the care levels of potential injurers, and there are good arguments why care levels should vary among different fields. We extend the analysis of the impact of due care on care actually chosen to situations where damages depend on sales prices. This is the case for many contractual relationships, but also for damages on capital markets which are usually calculated as the difference between share prices paid and share prices after the adverse information becomes public. In a model with errors in court, we show that tighter negligence standards may even reduce care levels chosen by potential injurers under reasonable circumstances. Due to this counter-intuitive effect, negligence standards can hardly be applied for fine-tuning the care levels of potential injurers when damages depend on prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In chapter 6 of Attempts, Gideon Yaffe defends the thesis that it is 'possible to attempt crimes of negligence' (, p. 173). I am persuaded that he is right about this, provided that 'attempt crimes of negligence' is read as (potentially misleading) shorthand for 'attempt to bring it about that we commit crimes of negligence.' But I find certain parts of his defense unpersuasive. My discussion of those parts of his argument motivates the following thesis: Not only can one attempt to bring it about that one commits a crime of negligence, but the attempt can be successful as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doug Husak suggests that sometimes an actor should be deemed reckless, and not merely negligent, with respect to the risks that she knowingly created but has forgotten at the moment of action. The validity of this conclusion, he points out, depends crucially on what it means to be aware of a risk. Husak's 'neutral prompt' and 'counterfactual actual belief' criteria are problematic, however. More persuasive is his suggestion that we understand belief, in this moral and criminal law context, as a concept whose meaning is determined by its function as a culpability standard. Husak concludes that inadvertent actors are often less culpable than knowing-but-later-forgetful actors; this is plausible, but there are also numerous counterexamples. Holly Smith focuses on negligence cases in which an agent's failure to notice a risk stems, not from a prior culpable choice, but from an objectionable attitude or set of attitudes. She is right to emphasize that genuine moral culpability does not depend on conscious choice. However, Smith also asserts that decisions that flow from an actor's objectionable attitudes are only rarely culpable, because they often do not arise from a reasonably full configuration of the actor's motives. This last requirement is, I fear, an unrealistic and unnecessarily demanding criterion of culpability. Even when many of the actor's evaluative attitudes are 'inactive' in Smith's sense, the actor might deserve blame for not bringing them to bear on his decision. Michael Moore and Heidi Hurd thoroughly explore, and find deficient, H.L.A. Hart's 'unexercised capacity' theory of negligence. They are correct that that theory requires a further judgment: an actor's inadvertence is culpable only if he had the capacity to have adverted 'if X' where X is the source of the actor's moral desert. They overstate, however, in suggesting that the capacity issue falls out of the picture once we identify that underlying desert basis. The authors also worry that if desert is grounded on an underlying vice, we lack a reliable way of ranking the different vices that might explain the actor's inadvertence; this is not a fatal objection, however, because negligence determinations are quite feasible even in the absence of clear rankings. Moore and Hurd conclude by identifying eight distinct categories in which criminal liability for negligence is justifiable. Negligence is indeed a surprisingly complex and pluralist concept. The three articles in this symposium brightly illuminate some of the most fundamental conceptual and normative issues in the debate over whether it is just to blame and punish the negligently inadvertent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negligence is a problematic basis for being morally blamed and punished for having caused some harm, because in such cases there is no choice to cause or allow-or risk causing or allowing-such harm to occur. The standard theories as to why inadvertent risk creation can be blameworthy despite the lack of culpable choice are that in such cases there is blame for: (1) an unexercised capacity to have adverted to the risk; (2) a defect in character explaining why one did not advert to the risk; (3) culpably acquiring or failing to rid oneself of these defects of character at some earlier time; (4) flawed use of those practical reasoning capacities that make one the person one is; or (5) chosen violation of per se rules about known precautions. Although each of these five theories can justify blame in some cases of negligence, none can justify blame in all cases intuitively thought to be cases of negligence, nor can any of these five theories show why inadvertent creation of an unreasonable risk, pure and simple, can be blameworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how condom manufacturers and their marketers have failed to adequately promote their product to the male homosexual population (gays). Inasmuch as the AIDS syndrome constitutes a major life-threatening danger and that gays appear to be particularly vulnerable, failure to aggressively promote a known preventive such as condoms to gays constitutes negligent homicide. The method used here defines what is traditionally viewed as a viable "target market," analyzes the major elements of marketing with regard to gays, and examines the neglect of condom promotion by their manufacturers. It is concluded that condom marketers have failed to promote a known protection against AIDS to a highly susceptible group. That group would normally be seen as a highly attractive market for condoms and were it not for homophobia, marketers would zealously pursue more aggressive promotion of condoms to gays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses reckless and gross negligence manslaughter in the context of English law. It is stated that gross negligence manslaughter looks at the actus reus component of a crime while reckless manslaughter considers the mens rea factor of a crime. The author calls for a more refined criteria that clearly differentiates gross from reckless. He concludes that crime and punishment should be equal to the moral culpability of the offender.

The article describes the implications of various photographs which explain topics on child nervous system, to the malpractice and medical litigation. It states that medical litigation has increased by 12% annually in the U.S. Based on the figures of the U.S. Department of Health, malpractice has direct and indirect costs which accounts 2% of the nation's health care spending. It highlights the doctrines of philosopher Claudius Galenus, who is regarded as the father of sports medicine.