Self-Defense: Tell Me Moore
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
Although Michael Moore has theorized much of the criminal law, he has left self-defense virtually untouched. This festschrift chapter sets forth the current debates within self-defense theory. It then pieces together Moore’s views about these puzzles, arguing that Moore adopts a distributive view of self-defense whereby an innocent victim may redistribute harm to its culpable or innocent cause. The chapter then questions some of Moore’s claims, including how Moore grounds the self-defensive right against innocent aggressors and threats, whether self-defense is best viewed as a mechanism for harm distribution, and whether Moore needs something like the forfeiture concept that he rejects. The chapter concludes by demonstrating that Moore’s commitments in self-defense would justify a deterrence-based criminal law and by asking how this result can be reconciled with Moore’s retributivist commitments.
Keywords
Michael Moore, self-defense, innocent aggressors, forfeiture, deterrence
Publication Title
Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael S. Moore
Repository Citation
Ferzan, Kimberly Kessler, "Self-Defense: Tell Me Moore" (2016). All Faculty Scholarship. 2614.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198703242.003.0015
Publication Citation
In Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths: The Philosophy of Michael S. Moore (Kimberly Kessler Ferzan & Stephen J. Morse eds., Oxford 2016)