Date Thesis Awarded
4-2008
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Philosophy
Advisor
Timothy M. Costelloe
Committee Members
Alan Fuchs
Michael Green
Abstract
I examine the underpinnings of the criminal law in "harm" and "offense," focusing on work by Feinberg, Rawls, and Mill. My thesis continues the theoretical discussion on "harm" and "offense" as the two bases for establishing the boundaries of legitimate criminal law. Specifically, I introduce a new corollary - the harmful-offense principle - that attempts to explain the relationship of the seemingly-disparate concepts of harm and offense. To demonstrate this principle's practical and theoretical usefulness, I apply the concept of "harmful offense" to a case study of Supreme Court rulings on recent child pornography that overturned a Congressional ban on the new wave of virtual child pornography.
Recommended Citation
DeBacker, Devin, "Harmful Offense to Others: A New Liberty-Limiting Principle and the 'New' Child Pornography" (2008). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 779.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/779
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Comments
Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.