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Responsibilities of criminal justice officials
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Brownlee, Kimberley (2010) Responsibilities of criminal justice officials. Journal of Applied Philosophy, Volume 27 (Number 2). pp. 123-139. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00490.x ISSN 0264-3758.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00490.x
Abstract
In recent years, political philosophers have hotly debated whether ordinary citizens have a general pro tanto moral obligation to follow the law. Contemporary philosophers have had less to say about the same question when applied to public officials. In this paper, I consider the latter question in the morally complex context of criminal justice. I argue that criminal justice officials have no general pro tanto moral obligation to adhere to the legal dictates and lawful rules of their offices. My claim diverges not only from the commonsense view about such officials, but also from the positions standardly taken in legal theory and political science debates, which presume there is some general obligation that must arise from legal norms and be reconciled with political realities. I defend my claim by highlighting the conceptual gap between the rigid, generalised, codified rules that define a criminal justice office and the special moral responsibilities of the various moral roles that may underpin that office (such as guard, guardian, healer, educator, mediator, counsellor, advocate, and carer). After addressing four objections to my view, I consider specific contexts in which criminal justice officials are obligated not to adhere to the demands of their offices. Amongst other things, the arguments advanced in this paper raise questions about both the distribution of formal discretion in the criminal justice system and the normative validity of some of the offices that presently exist in criminal justice systems.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Applied Philosophy | ||||||
Publisher: | Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. | ||||||
ISSN: | 0264-3758 | ||||||
Official Date: | 14 May 2010 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Volume 27 | ||||||
Number: | Number 2 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 123-139 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2010.00490.x | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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