The Requirement of Voluntary Act in Criminal Law and Attempts at Its Moral Justification

In order for a crime to be realized, the defendant to be judged as criminal with moral and legal liability, deserving to be punished properly, Anglo-American legal theory appeals to the Requirement of Voluntary Act (RVA) as a necessary and comprehensive requisite. According to this requisite the criminal act is consisted of mens rea and actus reus, with voluntary act as the actus reus in its restricted conception. Moral and legal philosophers have attempted to provide various moral explanations for the RVA, particularly utilizing theories in philosophy of action. In this paper, firstly I introduce the RVA as it is articulated in Anglo-American legal theory (in first two parts) and then illustrate and review five different possible moral rationales which could be deduced. Finally, I will conclude my paper with some hints about my preferable view and set forth questions concerning the very validity of such attempts at philosophically moral justification.