Abstract

This chapter is a critical appraisal of the “character theory of excuses” in legal philosophy, which maintains that an excuse is available to a defendant when their action is not a manifestation of their character. The essay argues, using a strategy derived from the skeptical position in the virtue ethics-situationism debate, that the moral psychology underlying the character theory of excuses is empirically inadequate. It is further suggested that yoking excuses to character assessment threatens to make determining excuses epistemically intractable in legal contexts, given the many practical obstacles to definitive character assessment.