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A note on omissions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Hyman Gross
Hyman Gross*
Affiliation:
Cambridge
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Extract

Criminal liability for failing to do something is as much a part of the law as criminal liability for anything else, and a very familiar feature of any developed legal system. Enforceable duties are created by law to discourage people from going about their business in unacceptable ways, to ensure proper participation in activities and programs that are important to the life of the community, and to make sure that people who occupy a position of responsibility or are in some special relationship which leads others to rely on them do what might reasonably be expected of them. Most crimes of omission on the books are there for some such reason, though there are other sorts of reasons for creating enforceable duties that are equally good.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , November 1984 , pp. 308 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1984

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References

1. ‘Liability for omissions in the criminal law’ (1984) 4 Legal Studies 88.

2. A Theory of Criminal Justice (1979), chapter 2 and 132–35.

3. Op cit in n 1 above, at 89.

4. Op cit in n 1 above, at 89–90.

5. Op cit in n 2 above, at 62–65.

6. It is of course possible to impose what amounts to a duty to report whatever one happens to know, no matter how the information was acquired, simply by treating a (‘wilful’?) failure to report what one knows as objectionable withholding and prohibiting it. But is that reasonable in a society in which, for example, failure to summon the police to help the victim of a serious crime of violence is generally not recognised as grounds for criminal liability, even when a call to the police could have been made with perfect ease and safety? It seems to follow a fortiori that no liability should attach to those who just by chance happen to learn of some act of treason and wish only to mind their own business.