This chapter draws attention to the analogy between conditions that are treated by criminal law as excusing conditions and certain similar conditions that are treated in another branch of the law as invalidating certain civil transactions such as wills, gifts, contracts, and marriages. This analogy shows that there is a rationale for our insistence on the importance of excusing conditions in criminal law that no form of determinism could impugn. This rationale also seems to be superior at many points to the two main accounts or explanations, which in Anglo-American jurisprudence have been put forward as the basis of the recognition of excusing conditions in criminal responsibility.
Keywords: criminal law, excusing conditions, invalidating conditions, criminal punishment, criminal responsibility,