What it Means to be Responsible for Action Mind and Movement in Criminal Law

Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov

Donnelly-Lazarov, What it Means to be Responsible for Action (for Edition 25(3))

What it Means to be Responsible for Action Mind and Movement in Criminal Law

Author(s) Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov ; [Click here for author details]
EAP Date (approved for print): 14 November 2017

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This paper asks whether law has a persuasive conception of action and considers what it might mean to be responsible for action so conceived. The matter is important. If law ’s concept of action does not allow us sensibly to claim that we are responsible for it, then law may need a substantially revised concept of what action is. The paper proposes that law lacks a consistent account of either action or responsibility and it suggests a better approach.

Keywords : law, neurolaw, criminal responsibility, criminal law, neuroscience, epistemology, autonomy

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Author notes

Professor Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov joined the School of Law at the University of Surrey in September 2017.

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 the Bar of Northern Ireland. Her research has straddled a number of substantive fields including criminal law, international law, and environmental law but the focus is always a philosophical one, where the aim is to elucidate law’s underlying concepts and normative rationales. Bebhinn is the author of A Philosophy of Criminal Attempts (CUP, 2015) and A Natural Law Approach to Normativity (Ashgate, 2007). Ongoing work explores law and the philosophy of action / mind.

https://www.surrey.ac.uk/law/people/bebhinn_donnellylazarov/

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