Permissibility in a world of wrongdoing

Speaker: Professor Victor Tadros, University of Warwick
Chair: Professor George Letsas & Professor Riz Mokal, UCL
Admission: Free
Series: Social & Legal Philosophy Colloquia 2015

The consequences of a person’s conduct (by which I mean both acts and omissions) sometimes include the consequences of the wrongful conduct of others. X’s conduct may have harmful consequences for Y because another agent, W, wrongfully acts or omits. Many people believe that, at least in some cases, W’s wrongdoing diminishes the significance of the harm to the permissibility of X acting or omitting. This paper considers arguments to support the idea that W’s wrongdoing can make such a difference, both in rescue cases and harming cases, exploring the relationship between these cases.

About the speaker

Professor Tadros was appointed to the School of Law at Warwick University in July 2006. Prior to that he held lectureships at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen. He was educated at the Universities of Oxford (BA hons) and London (PhD). His research interests are in criminal law and legal theory. He has written on criminal responsibility, criminal offences, criminal trials, the presumption of innocence and various aspects of moral and political philosophy. He is currently completing a book entitled The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law, which primarily concerned with the relationship between self-defence and punishment. He is also working on issues concerning the distinction between wrongs and offences in moral philosophy and criminal law theory as part of a project on criminalization with Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Massimo Renzo, funded by the AHRC. He continues to work on issues of criminal responsibility and criminal trials and evidence. As well as having interests in general legal, moral and political philosophy.

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