Online | Excuses: A ‘Nuclear’ Reply to John Gardner

Please note that the time allocated for this seminar will be devoted to discussion of the paper. The paper will be circulated to registered delegates a week before the event date.

Speaker: Andreas Vassiliou (University of Oxford)

About this event

So, we have justifications, and we have excuses. But what’s the difference? There are few questions in criminal law theory that have drawn the attention of scholars as much as the distinction between these two notions. John Gardner, among many prominent scholars, has offered an influential and sophisticated account, which seeks to distinguish the two defences by drawing from the theory of practical reason. His proposal is that a justification asserts that the defendant had undefeated reason to perform the offending act, whereas an excuse asserts that the defendant held a justified belief that she had undefeated reason to perform the offending act, although she had no such reason. I will argue that his account should be rejected because it is built on the ‘objectivist’ assumption that what we have reason to do is determined by all the relevant facts regardless of our epistemic perspective. My aim in this paper is to show that Gardner’s objectivist view leads to untenable results and that we should adopt instead an evidence-relative ‘perspectivist’ view, which holds that what we have reason to do is determined by our available evidence. The upshot will be that, if a defendant had evidence that she had undefeated reason to commit an offending act (which is necessary for her to have formed a justified belief that she had undefeated reason to do so), then she did have undefeated reason to commit the act. This will entail that there is no logical space for Gardner’s proposal on excuses, since it can’t be the case that the defendant had a justified belief that she had undefeated reason to commit the offending act without actually having such undefeated reason. Interestingly, Gardner had once anticipated this potential reply to his account but had summarily dismissed it as a ‘nuclear option’. This paper will trigger it.

About the speaker

Andreas Vassiliou is a third-year DPhil Law candidate in jurisprudence at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He is supervised by Prof. Nicolaos Stavropoulos, and his studies are generously supported by the AHRC (OOC DTP) – Corpus Christi Cowley studentship. His interests concern philosophy of practical reason, jurisprudence, and criminal law theory. He has taught jurisprudence and constitutional law in numerous colleges in Oxford and is currently a convenor of the Oxford Jurisprudence Discussion Group.

The focus of his DPhil research is on the impact of legal rules on normative reasons for action. His thesis challenges the exclusionary theory of rules, according to which rules give rise to a special kind of reasons, exclusionary reasons. It denies the validity of exclusionary reasons and develops an alternative theory of legal rules on the basis of ordinary reasons for action.

Prior to his current research, he read for his LLB and his LLM in Philosophy of Law at the University of Athens graduating from both with distinction and at the top of the class. He then moved to Oxford for his MJur and graduated with distinction. For his undergraduate and postgraduate studies, he received the kind support of seven scholarships (Onassis Foundation, A. Gazis Trust, A.G. Leventis Foundation, Lilian Voudouri Foundation, SYLFF, MFHR, and Antonios Papadakis Trust).

Delivery

This event will be delivered via Zoom Webinar. Attendee cameras and microphones will be turned off but they will be able to put questions to the panel via the Q&A box. You will receive your zoom joining link 48-hours before the start of the event. Contact the Laws Events team (laws-events@ucl.ac.uk) if you have not receive the link.

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