ABSTRACT
The dominant theories of responsibility in contemporary criminal law scholarship argue or assume that individuals or, more rarely, groups are responsible for criminal acts or omissions which engage their capacities for rational deliberation. Whether based on choice, opportunity or character, these agency-based theories typically attach importance to attitudes or states of mind such as knowledge, intention and recklessness, with dispositions such as carelessness or indifference featuring as secondary bases for the attribution of responsibility. In this chapter, I will reflect on the implications of Stanley Cohen’s arguments, in his fascinating and outstandingly imaginative monograph States of Denial (Cohen 2001), about the structure and importance of denial for the shape of our practices of attributing criminal responsibility. To what extent does, and should, criminal law hold us responsible for taking risks we are unaware of, or for engaging in conduct the harmful or wrongful nature of which we are not conscious, where that lack of consciousness or awareness is due to ‘states of denial’?
