Justice, Liability And Blame

Do lay judgments about criminal transgressions frequently conflict with the way a case is judged within the legal code? For the first time, we have empirical research results that show they do. The authors, a law professor and a research psychologist, suggest that such discrepancies in judgment could reduce citizens compliance with the lawfor once the legal code loses its moral authority within the community, its effectiveness will be jeopardized. }Drafters of legal codes often implicitly or explicitly seek to incorporate community standards. To what extent have they succeeded? This book examines shared intuitive notions of justice among laypersons and compares the discovered principles to those intantiated in current American criminal codes. After discussion of the proper role of community views in formulating legal doctrine, Robinson and Darley report eighteen original studies on a wide range of issues in dispute among legal theorists.
The authors compare lay institutions and code provisions on such questions as the justified use of force, insanity, causation, complicity, risk-creation, omission liability, culpability requirements, duress, entrapment, multiple offenses, and criminalization matters such as felony murder and sexual offenses. Many important differences between the legal code and community views are found, and the authors discuss the implications of thosedifferences. One implication is the possibility that such conflicts could lead to reduced compliance as the code loses its moral authority with the community. }