Hybrid | What is missing when defendants disown their actions?
This lecture will be delivered by Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov, as part of the Current Legal Problems Lecture Series 2024-25
Hybrid | What is missing when defendants disown their actions?
13 Mar 2025, 13:00 – 14:00
‘I didn’t know what I was doing!’
‘I wasn’t myself when I did that!’
‘I had no control over what I did!’
What is missing when defendants disown their actions?
Speaker: Professor Bebhinn Donelly-Lazarov (University of Surrey)
Chair: Dr Mark Dsouza (UCL Laws)
About the lecture
A defendant who commits an assault while sleepwalking may have, in that moment, a very clear understanding of what they are doing. They may perceive their environment with clarity. They may have resolute motivation and perform their action through coordinated movements well-equipped to achieving their end. Moreover, that end may be fixed by the defendant’s own desires rather than set as a response to perceived threats or physical attack. At first glance, if we are to consider exculpation, we are, therefore, left with a problem. The physical movements and states of mind that make up a criminal offence are present, and they are present in the typical way; straightforwardly bringing about a prohibited end. All this notwithstanding the fact that the behaviour may be entirely contrary to anything usually the agent would do. So, what gives? In virtue of what precisely are we no doubt absolutely right to say that the defendant is not culpable? That is the question I seek to answer. Where the cognitive, emotional, and physical apparatus of typical human action (reflected by the elements of a crime) appears present, what, we might consider, is missing such that it is simply obvious a defence is due? I will say that what the defendant lacks is a very distinctive and interesting kind of knowledge; that unique self-recognition that connects any agent to the action they do such that it ‘becomes’ an action of theirs. Above and beyond the legal elements of an offence, this knowing attachment to one’s own actions is necessary to (if never sufficient for) culpability of any sort. It is an attachment so foundational that it does not feature in the elements of a crime. It may come into view only when its absence matters. For our sleep-walker, it matters a good deal!
You can review the presentation slides of this talk via this link.
Professor Bebhinn joined Surrey Law School in September 2017, and served as head of school from 2021 - 2024. She became Head of the School of Social Sciences at its inception in August 2024. Bebhinn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, The Inns of Court School of Law, and Birmingham University. She is a member of Middle Temple and practised at the Bar of Northern Ireland. Bebhinn's legal research has a philosophical focus, where the aim is to elucidate law's underlying concepts and normative rationales, particularly in the context of criminal law; an approach adopted in her book A Philosophy of Criminal Attempts (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Bebhinn’s current research focuses on the meaning and nature of action in law, and on the relationship between consciousness and human responsibility.
The Current Legal Problems (CLP) lecture series and annual volume was established over fifty five years ago at the Faculty of Laws, University College London and is recognised as a major reference point for legal scholarship.
You can attend this event in-person at UCL Faculty of Laws (Bentham House, 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG) or alternatively you can join via a live stream.
Please make sure you choose the correct ticket when booking your place.
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Further information
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