Codes that use the individualized objective standard fail to provide a principle by which one can determine those characteristics of an offender with which the objective standard ought to be individualized and those with which *288 it ought not. In reality, however, the mechanism only shifts the form of the problem. At the same time, the mechanism avoids reversion to a completely subjective standard, which might exempt many blameworthy cases from liability. A person's situation and capacities are central to an assessment of whether a person can be fairly blamed for a violation, and the individualized objective standard allows the decision maker to take these into account. The widely used mechanism avoids the problems acknowledged to attend a strictly objective standard. A second example is found in a central mechanism for determining an offender's blameworthiness: the use of an individualized objective standard. Without a principle defining the interrelation of the "purposes," nearly any rule can be justified by some "purpose of punishment." Thus, a decision maker can switch among distributive principles as needed to provide an apparent rationale for whichever rule the person prefers, even if that preference is not based on rational criteria. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of rationality, but one that is, in large part, illusory. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" - just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes - as a justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves.
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