Larry Alexander and Kimberly Kessler Ferzan on Omissions and Normative Ignorance: A Critical Reply

Abstract

AbstractReflections on Crime and Culpability seeks to elaborate, extend, and occasionally qualify the insights reached by Larry Alexander and Kim Ferzan in their influential prior collaboration, Crime and Culpability. They deftly explore any number of new issue that all criminal theorists should be encouraged to address. In my essay, I discuss and challenge their positions on omissions as well as on moral ignorance. Their treatment of the latter issue is a clear improvement over that in their earlier book. But their views on omissions suggest to me that they should have had reservations about some of the most fundamental claims of their overarching theory.