The Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will host a public lecture
by Professor David Brink of the University of California-San Diego Philosophy
Department on Wednesday, April 26th, at 5:15pm in Room G24 of the Law Faculty
Building. The topic of the lecture is "Partial Responsibility." Below is an
abstract of its content. Everyone is welcome to attend.
ABSTRACT: Anglo-American criminal law is broadly retributive in character,
predicating blame and punishment on culpable or responsible wrongdoing.
However, responsibility is scalar, and there is an important question how
criminal trials should handle cases of partial responsibility, especially in
light of Blackstone’s belief that it is worse to over-punish than to
under-punish. I examine four approaches: (1) a bivalent system with a
comparatively low threshold for responsibility/excuse operative in American
criminal law; (2) a trivalent system operative in some European criminal
justice systems; (3) a tetravalent system, which rounds punishment downward in
response to Blackstone’s asymmetry; and (4) a fully scalar analog system that
aims at proportionate justice. A bivalent criminal justice system fails to
deliver just deserts in significant ways. Proportionate justice is
comparatively easy to understand in principle but potentially fragile in
practice. Nonetheless, aiming at proportionate justice may minimize unjust
deserts. However, if the difficulties of implementing proportionate justice
are severe enough, we might prefer a discontinuous system that is more
fine-grained than bivalence. Trivalent and tetravalent systems are alternatives
worth exploring.
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Matthew H. Kramer
Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University
Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
Director of Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy
Fellow of the British Academy
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