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BLAMEWORTHINESS AND TIME*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2012

Jules Coleman  and
Alexander Sarch
Jules Coleman
Affiliation:
New York University
Alexander Sarch
Affiliation:
University of Michigan Law [email protected]
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Abstract

Reactive emotion accounts hold that blameworthiness should be analyzed in terms of the familiar reactive emotions. However, despite the attractions of such views, we are not persuaded that blameworthiness is ultimately a matter of correctly felt reactive emotion. In this paper, we draw attention to a range of little-discussed considerations involving the moral significance of the passage of time that drive a wedge between blameworthiness and the reactive emotions: the appropriateness of the reactive emotions is sensitive to the passage of time in ways that attributions of blameworthiness are not. There are a number of ways in which reactive emotion accounts might attempt to accommodate the moral significance of time, however. We consider the most important of these but ultimately find them wanting. Accordingly, we conclude that the prospects for the reactive emotion accounts are bleak. Our argument, if successful, has a range of implications for legal theory, most importantly in providing a novel moral basis for statutes of limitations and in shedding light on new avenues in the theory of criminal law generally.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Theory , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 101 - 137
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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