Crime and Culpability

Larry Alexander is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego. He has authored and co-authored five books, most recently Is There a Right to Freedom of Expression and, with Emily Sherwin, Demystifying Legal Reasoning. Kimberly Kessler Ferzan is associate dean for faculty affairs and professor of law at Rutgers University School of Law, Camden. The author of numerous articles, essays, and book chapters on criminal law theory, she is co-founder and co-director of the Rutgers-Camden Institute for Law and Philosophy.

• Part I. Introduction: Retribution and the Criminal Law: 1. Criminal law, punishment, and desert; Part II. The Culpable Act: 2. The essence of culpability: acts manifesting insufficient concern for the legally protected interests of others; 3. Negligence; 4. Defeaters of culpability; Part III. The Immateriality of Resulting Harm to Legally Protected Interests: 5. Only culpability, not resulting harm, affects desert; 6. When are inchoate crimes culpable and why?; 7. The locus of culpability; Part IV. A Proposed Code: 8. What a culpability-based criminal code might look like.