Enoch on Jaffe on Attempts

David Enoch (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has posted A Comment on Gideon Yaffe's Attempts (forthcoming in the Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies) on the Internet. Here is a taste:

In what follows, then, I critically discuss Yaffe's account of the elements of a crime in terms of what the prosecution is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (section 1). Then, in section 2, I raise doubts about the Completion Counterfactual – a central part of Yaffe's account of trying – and in particular about its ability to play such a central explanatory role. Section 3 is a rejection of a more focused – and highly surprising – claim of Yaffe's, namely, that whether someone is trying to do something may depend on how things actually are (and not just on his or her mental states). In section 4 I proceed to evaluate a central claim in the later chapters of the book, namely, that there are some important implications of evidentiary problems regarding attempts. I argue that there is no reason to believe any such special problems exist. In section 5 I again focus on a more local point of Yaffe's – his treatment of abandonment, arguing that his account there relies on a problematic assumption about the arithmetic of reasons. In the final section I return to the big topic of the relations between the philosophy of action and a commentary on the law of attempts.

Recommended.

And here is Yaffe's book: Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law.