Justifications

For successful use of the concept of culpability in our modern day criminal justice system, it is critical to require distinguishing between where there is intent, or the absence of, in a committed crime. This criteria is critical to determining whether a person should or should not be held accountable for the criminalized action. Justification and excuses are just two ways one can look to circumvent serious criminal punishment. Distinctive from an excuse, a justification is “concerned with whether actions conform to proper normative standards” (Segev, 34). Thus, in order to hold all to fair and equal standards, a mistake, mainly ignorance of the law, can be justified if it is based on the rational analysis of information that the wrongdoer should possess.

Justification of an act revolves around rational reflection of the reasons for committing that said act. Additionally, an act is justified is “the agent should not make further inquiries in order to ascertain additional information,” that is they reasonably internalized rational purposes without the need of further knowledge (Segev, 44). In rare situations can actions committed with incomplete information be justified. In this scenario, the offender must rationally believe that the incomplete cost of gathering more information is too much, compared to acting with the given information. An example of this could be an off-duty volunteer firefighter witnessing a local fire. He could run in the burning house and make an effort to stop the fire based on his training, however, he ultimately would be unaware of the cause of the fire and possibly be thought as complicit to the deed.

Authoritative interpretations of the law are not always correct. There are plenty of times in which a court may come to wrong conclusions if there is a lack of consideration to a valid justification. Therefore, there an important need for the distinction between what is morally correct and authority. The author notes it is misleading to believe an excuse as the only ground of exculpation when negligently breaking the law. This is because justification can stand in place for ignorance of the law, “individuals who rely on the guidance of officials or lawyers with regard to the law act justifiably” (Segev, 63). Ignorance of the law in reality is not commonly considered. This premise only holds true if an individual is of the belief that rational beliefs and actions are justified, even if they might be mistaken (Segev, 64).