How can we know whether we are punishing the same corporation that committed some past crime? Though central to corporate criminal justice, legal theorists and philosophers have yet to address the basic question of how corporate identity persists through time. Simple cases, where crime and punishment are close in time and the corporation has changed little, can mislead us into thinking an answer is always easy to come by. The issue becomes more complicated when corporate criminals undergo any number of (...) transformations—rebranding, spinning-off a division, merging, changing ownership, changing management, swapping lines of business, etc. These changes are common among all corporations, including those trying to conceal or limit liability for past crimes. This article takes a first step toward developing a workable and philosophically satisfying theory of corporate personal identity and discusses its prospects for fulfilling the retributive, rehabilitative, and deterrent purposes of criminal law. (shrink)

If someone with dissociative identity disorder commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary (...) requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep-seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter-personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts. (shrink)

While many theorists have argued that dissociative identity disorder is a case of multiple selves or persons in a single body, I maintain that DID instead should be understood as involving a single self who suffers from significant disruptions to self-consciousness. Evidence of overlapping abilities and memories, as well as the very logic of dissociation, supports the claim that DID results from internal conflict endured by a single self. Along these lines, I will maintain that alter-formation should be understood as (...) the result of extreme emotional ambivalence. While it is true that subjects with DID exhibit volitional conflict, as Frankfurt [1988. The Importance of What We Care About. New York: Cambridge University Press; 1999. Necessity, Volition, and Love. New York: Cambridge University Press] maintains, I argue that these incompatible volitions have a deeper source: conflicting desires and affective stances concerning basic emotional needs that are not easily abandoned. A single subject turns to... (shrink)

If someone with dissociative identity disorder commits a wrongful act, is she responsible? If one adopts the Multiple Persons Thesis, it may seem that one alter cannot be responsible for the actions of another alter. Conversely, if one regards the subject as a single person, it may seem that she is responsible for any actions she performs. I will argue that this subject is a single person, but one who suffers from delusions of disownership and therefore does not fulfill ordinary (...) requirements for responsible agency. This is because she suffers from extreme ambivalence: her deep-seated needs and desires conflict, and she forms alter-personalities as a way to cope with inner discord without abandoning any of these contradictory impulses. However, although the ability to exercise autonomous agency is eroded in such cases, the capacity for autonomous agency is preserved. The subject with DID is weakly responsible for her wrongful acts. (shrink)

A ‘Ulysses arrangement’ (UA) is an agreement where a patient may arrange for psychiatric treatment or non-treatment to occur at a later stage when she expects to change her mind. In this article, I focus on ‘competence-insensitive’ UAs, which raise the question of the permissibility of overriding the patient’s subsequent decisionally competent change of mind on the authority of the patient’s own prior agreement. In “The Ethical Justification for Ulysses Arrangements”, I consider sceptical and supportive arguments concerning competence-insensitive UAs, and (...) argue that there are compelling reasons to give such UAs serious consideration. In “Decisional Competence and Legal Capacity in UAs”, I examine the nature of decisional competence and legal capacity as they arise in UAs, an issue neglected by previous research. Using the distinctions which emerge, I then identify the legal structure of a competence-insensitive UA in terms of the types of legal capacity it embodies and go on to explain how types of legal capacity might be shared between the patient and a trusted other to offer support to the patient in the creation and implementation of a competence-insensitive UA. This is significant because it suggests possibilities for building patient support mechanisms into models of legal UAs, which has not addressed in the literature to date. Drawing on this, in “Using Insights from the Competence/Capacity Distinction to Enhance Patient Support in UAs”, I offer two possible models to operationalize competence-insensitive UAs in law that allow for varying degrees of patient support through the involvement of a trusted other. Finally, I outline some potential obstacles implementing these models would face and highlight areas for further research. (shrink)