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Chapter 1 sets the stage. The author’s starting point is the willful ignorance doctrine, since it is the source from which the author will eventually extract his general theory of equal culpability mental state imputation. After explaining core criminal law concepts (particularly the mens rea concepts), the author introduces the willful ignorance doctrine, its history, and the normative claim it is premised on—namely, the equal culpability thesis. Situating this doctrine in the broader criminal law context reveals the questions to be tackled in the book, and the chapter ends by indicating the sorts of answers the author will go on to develop.

Previous chapters have been concerned mainly with willful ignorance—which, paradigmatically, is to violate the duty to reasonably inform oneself about a suspected inculpatory proposition with the intention of preserving one’s ignorance. But one also might fail to inform oneself about one’s suspicions with other mens rea: one might do so while reckless or negligent with respect to the fact that one will remain in ignorance. Such lesser breaches of one’s investigatory duties can be culpable too. However, the existing willful ignorance doctrine does not reach these lesser forms of culpable ignorance. That is a problem. This chapter argues not only that it would be good for courts to go beyond the existing willful ignorance doctrine, but that they are committed to doing so. The law allows willful ignorance to substitute for knowledge on the theory that acting with the former can be culpable to the same degree and in the same way as acting with the latter. Accordingly, the law is committed also to allowing certain forms of egregious nonwillful ignorance—most importantly, reckless ignorance—to substitute for knowledge, provided the conditions of equal culpability are met.

Determining when the equal culpability thesis holds sets the boundaries in which the willful ignorance doctrine is to be applied. Chapter 3 thus considers the best existing attempts to specify the conditions in which the equal culpability thesis holds, but proceeds to argue that none succeeds. Still, each failure is instructive. First, the chapter argues against the unrestricted equal culpability thesis. Not all willful ignorance, it turns out, is as culpable as the analogous knowing misconduct. Then the chapter argues against the three leading attempts to restrict the thesis. Section II argues against a restriction that appeals to bad motives, while Section III argues against a common counterfactual restriction (according to which willful ignorance is as culpable as knowing misconduct when one would do the actus reus even with knowledge). The latter proposal fails since criminal culpability does not depend on considerations about counterfactual conduct or one’s willingness to misbehave. Finally, Section IV discusses a third restriction, offered by Deborah Hellman, which asks whether the decision to remain in ignorance was itself justified. This version of the thesis is on the right track, but still requires refinement in important ways.

Chapter 6 argued for moving beyond the existing willful ignorance doctrine by allowing some forms of nonwillful ignorance to substitute for knowledge. But where does it end? Chapter 7 considers moving beyond the willful ignorance doctrine in a different direction—by allowing willful ignorance to substitute for purpose—but argues that this doctrinal expansion is not justified. Acting with purpose to bring about a bad state of affairs will, all else equal, always be more culpable (or culpable in a different way) than doing so in willful ignorance of whether this state of affairs will result. This precludes willful ignorance of a proposition from substituting for purpose to make it true. Thus, this chapter aims to get clearer on the limits of equal culpability imputation.

This chapter aims to defend a general theory of equal-culpability-based imputation of mental states in the criminal law. The willful ignorance doctrine is one example of an equal culpability mens rea imputation principle. After all, what grounds imputing knowledge to a willfully ignorant actor is that her conduct is as culpable as the analogous knowing conduct. Chapters 3 and 4 examined the scope of this imputation principle. But deeper worries linger. Even if equal culpability is necessary for this mode of imputing knowledge to the willfully ignorant, does it provide sufficient justification for such imputation? This chapter confronts two of the deeper objections that remain. One is pressing for practitioners within an existing legal framework (courts and litigants). But it admits of straightforward answers. The other is a harder normative problem for those who make law. Why should lawmakers take equal culpability to be a legitimate basis for imputing missing mental states? Answering this challenge requires a general theory of equal culpability imputation, which it is the aim of this chapter to provide. This theory will then serve as the basis for the remaining chapters in the book.

This introduction outlines the general questions to be investigated in Criminally Ignorant: Why the Law Pretends We Know What We Don’t and provides a roadmap of the arguments to come. The overarching aim of the book is to defend a theory of when and why the criminal law may legitimately impute mental states on the basis of equal culpability. This helps place the existing willful ignorance doctrine on a more secure normative foundation, while at the same time revealing the pressing need for doctrinal reforms. The overall project is not limited to willful ignorance, however. The normative idea behind the willful ignorance doctrine—that we may impute missing mental states to defendants on equal culpability grounds—is surprisingly fertile, and, if taken seriously, grounds an array of further imputation principles. The book thus seeks to develop a theory that places the idea of equal culpability imputation on solid theoretical footing, while also demarcating its proper boundaries.

Some agents are willfully ignorant regarding the behavior in which they propose to engage; they deliberately forgo the opportunity to inquire into the features that determine the behavior’s moral status. Examples include driving a car across an international border, suspecting that—but not verifying whether—the car contains contraband; buying cheap clothing, suspecting that—but not verifying whether—it was manufactured in a sweatshop; and so on. The law (when it applies) typically holds that such agents have no excuse for their ignorant wrongdoing, declaring them equally as culpable as those who engage in the same behavior but who are not ignorant of the relevant details. Legal and moral philosophers have tended to agree with this claim. This chapter argues that the case for equal culpability is not easily made.

This chapter contains four parts that introduce a number of refinements, qualifications, and complexities that provide further content to an ideal theory of ignorance of law. In the first part, I offer further detail about exactly what the offender who knows his act to be wrongful must believe in order to be fully responsible for it. In the second part, I discuss a number of possible exceptions to my general view—for example, I argue that persons are blameworthy for the wrongs they perform when they are wilfully ignorant their conduct is wrong. In the third part, I reject the claim that a theory of ignorance of law should differentiate between wrongs that are mala in se and wrongs that are mala prohibita. Finally, I consider the possibility that ignorant defendants should ever be eligible for punishment when their mistakes of law are merely negligent.

Despite the enormity of the financial losses flowing from the 2008 financial crisis and the outrageousness of the conduct that led up to it, almost no individual involved has been prosecuted for criminal conduct, much less actually gone to prison. This chapter argues that the failure to punish those in management for their role in this misconduct stems from a misunderstanding of the need to prove that they personally knew of this wrongdoing and harbored an intent to defraud. Not only would negligence be a sufficient legal and moral basis for imposing terms of imprisonment in these cases, mere causal responsibility would also be enough, for causal responsibility has embedded in it all we need to find those causally responsible morally responsible too, and once some basis for moral responsibility is established, the imposition of terms of imprisonment is both legally possible and morally just.

This chapter argues for a “Platonic” conception of open-mindedness. Open-mindedness is not simply a matter of being willing to change your mind in response to a counterargument. You have to be willing to change your mind conditional on spending significant time with the argument, finding each step compelling, and being unable to expose a flaw. If you are willing to do this, then you may be open-minded toward the argument provided you also don’t violate various procedural norms and aren’t disposed to allow various affective factors to influence your beliefs (for example, you aren’t willfully ignorant). On this conception, we can explain how it is possible to hold an outright or “full” belief even while being open-minded toward arguments against that belief.