About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

65 La. L. Rev. 941 (2004-2005)
Criminalizing Endangerment

handle is hein.journals/louilr65 and id is 951 raw text is: Criminalizing Endangerment R. A. Duff I. ATTACKS AND ENDANGERMENTS Some crimes (types or tokens) consist in attacks on legally protected interests. If I shoot at you, intending to injure you; or start a fire, intending to damage your property; or lie to you, intending to obtain money from you: I attack your interests in physical integrity, in property, in not being harmfully deceived-attacks against which the criminal law protects you. If my attack is successfully consummated, I am (absent a further defense) guilty of wounding with intent, of arson, or of obtaining by deception.' If my attack is unconsummated, I am guilty of attempting to commit one of those crimes; attempts are attacks that fail.' Other crime types or tokens consist in endangering rather than attacking legally protected interests. If, without intending harm, I act in a way that I realize might injure you or damage your property, I endanger your physical security or property; if, without intending to deceive, I tell you that a certain bank is financially secure, realizing that my statement might be false and might induce you to open an account with that bank, I endanger your interest in having accurate financial information to act upon. The criminal law protects these interests against such endangerments. If the endangerment is Copyright 2005, by R. A. Duff and Stuart Green. * Grateful thanks are due to the Leverhulme Trust, for the Research Fellowship during which I wrote this paper; to participants in the Baton Rouge Workshop, and in seminars at Ohio State University and the University of Stirling, at which I tried out earlier drafts; and to Marcelo Ferrante, Stuart Green, Jeremy Horder, Ken Simons and Leo Zaibert for detailed written comments. They will recognize their influence in what follows; they will also recognize that the remaining errors and confusions are all mine. This paper is also being published by Oxford University Press in: Defining Crimes: Essays on the Special Part of the Criminal Law, edited by R. A. Duff and Stuart Green. Thanks are due to the Press for permission to publish the paper here as well. 1. See Offenses Against the Person Act, 1861, c. 100, § 18 (U.K.); Criminal Damage Act, 1971, c. 48, § 1 (U.K.); Theft Act, 1968, c. 60, § 15 (U.K.). Since wounding with intent requires an intention to injure, this crime type consists in an attack. Since arson does not require an intention to damage, that crime type does not consist in an attack; but since such an intention is sufficient mens rea for the offense, some tokens of that type consist in attacks. Obtaining by deception requires an 'intention of permanently depriving' the victim, and most tokens of this crime type will indeed be attacks; but given the extended definition of that 'intention' in section 6, and the fact that 'deception' need only be 'reckless', the crime type does not consist in an attack. 2. See Criminal Attempts Act, 1981, c. 47, § l(l) (U.K.); R.A. Duff, Criminal Attempts 221-28, 363-74 (1996).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most