moral offences have a voluntary character: ‘If a person
whose action, judged
abextra
, has offended against moral rules or principles, succeeds in establishing thathe did this unintentionally and in spite of every precaution that it was possible forhim to take, he is excused from moral responsibility, and to blame him in these
circumstances would itself be considered morally objectionable’ (p.178). Although
many legal offences share this voluntary character, legal systems often qualify this
feature by such means as the use of ‘objective’ tests that attribute
to individuals the
capacities of a hypothetical ‘reasonable’ person or even by creating strict liability
offences.