Partial Responsibility and Excuse

Abstract

Responsibility and excuse are shown to be scalar. Though American criminal law is bivalent about responsibility and excuse, ideal criminal law theory should be scalar and pursue proportionate justice. Bivalence cannot be defended for non-ideal theory. Different feasible ways of recognizing partial responsibility and excuse are explored, including proportionate justice, trivalence, tetravalence and pentavalence. While there is anecdotal evidence against pentavalence, the remaining three models are all worth pursuing empirically.