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Criminally Ignorant - Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don't (Hardcover)
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Criminally Ignorant - Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don't (Hardcover)
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This is a book about the legal fiction that sometimes we know what
we don't. The willful ignorance doctrine says defendants who bury
their heads in the sand rather than learn they're doing something
criminal are punished as if they knew. Not all legal fictions are
unjustified, however. This one, used within proper limits, is a
defensible way to promote the aims of the criminal law. Preserving
your ignorance can make you as culpable as if you knew what you
were doing, and so the interests and values protected by the
criminal law can be promoted by treating you as if you had
knowledge. This book provides a careful defense of this method of
imputing mental states based on equal culpability. On the one hand,
the theory developed here shows why the willful ignorance doctrine
is only partly justified and requires reform. On the other hand, it
demonstrates that the criminal law needs more legal fictions of
this kind. Repeated indifference to the truth may substitute for
knowledge, and very culpable failures to recognize risks can
support treating you as if you took those risks consciously.
Moreover, equal culpability imputation should also be applied to
corporations, not just individuals. Still, such imputation can be
taken too far. We need to determine its limits to avoid injustice.
Thus, the book seeks to place equal culpability imputation on a
solid normative foundation, while demarcating its proper
boundaries. The resulting theory of when and why the criminal law
can pretend we know what we don't has far-reaching implications for
legal practice and reveals a pressing need for reform.
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