![]() ![]() On the other hand, it disallows defendants to appeal to defences they would otherwise be entitled to use to block liability, if they culpably created the conditions of their own defence. On the one hand, the actio libera doctrine allows us to waive the voluntariness requirement that is generally needed for criminal liability. But I argue that we must distinguish between two importantly different understandings of the doctrine itself and its application in law. This doctrine seems to be instantiated in a great many actual legal practices. The actio libera doctrine allows us to impute unfree actions to persons, provided they were responsible for causing the conditions of unfreedom that characterizes those actions when performed. Like our Enlightenment counterparts, contemporary philosophers of criminal law, as well as most Western legal systems (both common law and civil), allow that persons can be responsible for acts that are not free when performed, provided they were free in their causes. The actio libera in causa doctrine, as originally formulated by various Enlightenment philosophers, concerns the imputation of responsibility to actors for actions unfree in themselves, but free in their causes. Robinson suggests the most expansive application of a.l.i.c.: in his opinion, it covers all cases where an offender is "creating the conditions of his own defense".Actio Libera in Causa Actio Libera in Causa The modern scholars take a wider view, following Joachim Hruschka, who in the 20th century argued that duress and incapacitation cannot be a defense if "the agent puts himself in situation of duress in order to be forced to commit the act or if he took the drug to gain the courage to do so". Originally the doctrine was interpreted in a quite narrow way to describe a situation where the offender intentionally created conditions that later allowed him to act in a criminal way, with the purpose of committing that crime. This is the situation that led to the formation of the a.l.i.c. Latin: Actio non in se, sed tamen in sua causa libera, an "act not free by itself but its cause was free", a situation where the person also had no choice but to act, but prior to that he had voluntarily chosen the conditions that forced the subsequent act.Latin: Actio neque in se, neque in sua causa libera, an "act not free by itself and its cause also not free", a situation where the person was involuntary forced into circumstances where he had no choice but to act.Latin: Actio libera in se, an "act free by itself", a situation when the person was able to choose the to act or not to act.The doctrine was created during the Age of Enlightenment by philosophers and law scholars ( Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, Francis Hutcheson) who distinguished between: is mentioned with regard to voluntary intoxication: if a person gets drunk, she will not be able use her state of inebriation to claim that, for example, her act of negligence was an accident. However, this defense is not available, for example, to a person who started the fight, thus creating a "cause" for killing in self-defense at a later time. A typical example is self-defense: in Anglo-American jurisdictions lethal action is justified under certain circumstances while protecting oneself, others, or property. The doctrine means that even if the person was not free to choose the course of action while performing an offence, he can still be held responsible for it if he voluntarily created a condition ("cause") for the offending action. ![]()
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