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Mens rea is the mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action or lack of action would cause a crime to be committed. It is a necessary element of many crimes.
In jurisprudence, an excuse is a defense to criminal charges that is distinct from an exculpation. Justification and excuse are different defenses in a criminal case. Exculpation is a related concept which reduces or extinguishes a person's culpability and therefore a person's liability to pay compensation to the victim of a tort in the civil law.
The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means "outside the Church there is no salvation". The 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church explained this as "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is His Body."
Due diligence is the investigation or exercise of care that a reasonable business or person is normally expected to take before entering into an agreement or contract with another party or an act with a certain standard of care.
Supererogation is the performance of more than is asked for; the action of doing more than duty requires. In ethics, an act is supererogatory if it is good but not morally required to be done. It refers to an act that is more than is necessary, when another course of action—involving less—would still be an acceptable action. It differs from a duty, which is an act wrong not to do, and from acts morally neutral. Supererogation may be considered as performing above and beyond a normative course of duty to further benefits and functionality.
Gross negligence is the "lack of slight diligence or care" or "a conscious, voluntary act or omission in reckless disregard of a legal duty and of the consequences to another party." In some jurisdictions a person injured as a result of gross negligence may be able to recover punitive damages from the person who caused the injury or loss.
Willful blindness or Wilful blindness is a term used in law to describe a situation in which a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themself unaware of facts that would render him or her liable or implicated. In United States v. Jewell, the court held that proof of willful ignorance satisfied the requirement of knowledge as to criminal possession and importation of drugs.
Corporate liability, also referred to as liability of legal persons, determines the extent to which a company as a legal person can be held liable for the acts and omissions of the natural persons it employs and, in some legal systems, for those of other associates and business partners.
In criminal law, strict liability is liability for which mens rea does not have to be proven in relation to one or more elements comprising the actus reus although intention, recklessness or knowledge may be required in relation to other elements of the offense. The liability is said to be strict because defendants could be convicted even though they were genuinely ignorant of one or more factors that made their acts or omissions criminal. The defendants may therefore not be culpable in any real way, i.e. there is not even criminal negligence, the least blameworthy level of mens rea.
The fate of the unlearned, also known as the destiny of the unevangelized, is an eschatological question about the ultimate destiny of people who have not been exposed to a particular theology or doctrine and thus have no opportunity to embrace it. The question is whether those who never hear of requirements issued through divine revelations will be punished for failure to abide by those requirements.
An invincible error is, in Christian philosophy, a normally sinful action which is not considered sinful because it was committed through blameless ignorance that one's actions were harmful or otherwise prohibited.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
In Catholic moral theology, probabilism provides a way of answering the question about what to do when one does not know what to do. Probabilism proposes that one can follow an authoritative opinion regarding whether an act may be performed morally, even though the opposite opinion is more probable. It was first formulated in 1577 by Bartholomew Medina, OP, who taught at Salamanca.
In criminal law, guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. Legal guilt is entirely externally defined by the state, or more generally a "court of law". Being "guilty" of a criminal offense means that one has committed a violation of criminal law, or performed all the elements of the offense set out by a criminal statute. The determination that one has committed that violation is made by an external body and is, therefore, as definitive as the record-keeping of the body. So the most basic definition is fundamentally circular: a person is guilty of violating a law, if a court says so.
Ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware of its content.
In the North American legal system and in US Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, willful violation or willful non-compliance is a violation of workplace rules and policies that occurs either deliberately or as a result of neglect.
The invincible ignorance fallacy is a deductive fallacy of circularity where the person in question simply refuses to believe the argument, ignoring any evidence given. It is not so much a fallacious tactic in argument as it is a refusal to argue in the proper sense of the word, the method instead of being to either make assertions with no consideration of objections or to simply dismiss objections by calling them excuses, conjecture, etc. or saying that they are proof of nothing; all without actually demonstrating how the objection fit these terms.
Guilt may refer to:
Invincible ignorance is used in Catholic moral theology to refer to the state of persons who are, through no fault of their own, ignorant of the fact that the Christian message is true. It is the opposite of the term vincible ignorance. The first Pope to use the term officially seems to have been Pope Pius IX in the allocution Singulari Quadam and the encyclicals Singulari Quidem and Quanto Conficiamur Moerore. The term, however, is far older than that. Aquinas, for instance, uses it in his Summa Theologica, and discussion of the concept can be found as far back as Origen.
Presumption in the canon law of the Catholic Church is a term signifying a reasonable conjecture concerning something doubtful, drawn from arguments and appearances, which by the force of circumstances can be accepted as a proof. It is on this presumption our common adage is based: "Possession is nine points of the law". Presumption has its place in canon law only when positive proofs are wanting, and yet the formulation of some judgment is necessary. It is never in itself an absolute proof, as it only presumes that something is true. Canonists divide presumption into:
- presumption of law (juris), or that which is deduced from some legal precept or authority expressed in law or based upon precedents or similarities, and
- presumption of a judge or man, when the law is silent on the subject and an opinion must be formed according to the way that circumstances and indications would affect a prudent man or judge.
References
- 1 2 "Ignorance - Invincible and Vincible (This Rock: July/August 1999)". Archived from the original on 2011-06-28.
- 1 2 George Hayward Joyce, “INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE,” ed. James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908–1926), 403.
- 1 2 "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Ignorance". www.newadvent.org.