ABSTRACT
Justifications and excuses are of interest to the law because motives and intentions are. It is a mark of a civilised polity that its law should distinguish between an intentional and an accidental killing, or between killing with malice aforethought and in self-defence. Accordingly, the justifications and excuses that the law can admit have regard to the criminal, rather than the moral, status of an act. Non-criminal immoral behaviour is not legally excusable but legally indifferent. The view that the primary role of the criminal law is to suppress public nuisance rather than to enforce moral behaviour has encouraged a largely pragmatic approach to the practice of punishment. A pragmatic approach to questions of punishment, however, might not always yield the same answers as an approach that places issues of agent-responsibility centre-stage. In determining whether punishment is warranted in a case, one can focus on the factors that inculpate or exculpate the agent, imposing a certain measure of punishment.
