On Passion’s Potential to Undermine Rationality: A Reply

This Reply is organized into several sections. Following the Introduction, I respond to my six distinguished commentators. In Section II, I consider Professor Chin’s concern that the distinction between justification and excuse bears no practical relevance for the criminal law. In Section III, I respond to Professor Baron’s argument that reasonable mistake of fact is consistent with justification-a view, she observes, that is generally reflected in the criminal law. Building on the discussion of whether mistake and justification are compatible, Section IV addresses Professor Pillsbury’s treatment of heat of passion as a hybrid defense that uniquely incorporates components of both justification and excuse, including whether such a characterization is analytically valid. In Section V, I respond to Professor Westen’s various criticisms of my arguments that heat of passion is a partial excuse. Next, in Section VI, I attend to Professor Morse’s claim that the issue of the nature of heat of passion is “irreducibly normative,” and, therefore, necessarily entirely non-analytical. In Section VII, I consider Professor Weisberg’s extension of my earlier arguments that an understanding of the interdisciplinarity of psychology, philosophy, and law may be useful to the analysis of structural and functional issues of second-degree murder and personality disorders (or psychopathy).