Willful ignorance in law and morality

Abstract

This article introduces the main conceptual and normative questions about willful ignorance. The first section asks what willful ignorance is, while the second section asks why—and how much—it merits moral or legal condemnation. My approach is to critically examine the criminal law's view of willful ignorance. Doing so not only reveals the range of positions one might take about the phenomenon but also sheds light on foundational questions about the nature of culpability and the relation between law and morality.

Why Blame the Ostrich? Understanding Culpability for Willful Ignorance

“…What exactly qualifies as willful ignorance? Notwithstanding ongoing debates among legal theorists about the legal notion of willful ignorance, two basic requirements are widely agreed upon: A willfully ignorant defendant must be sufficiently suspicious of the illegal status of their action and at the same time fail to learn about it (Sarch, 2018;Williams, 1961).…”

“…Following Sarch (2018)'s definition of a basic legal account of willful ignorance, a defendant is willfully ignorant of an incriminating fact p if ... (Sarch, 2018) (i) they have sufficiently serious suspicions of p, and (ii) they deliberately fail to take reasonably available steps to ascertain whether p actually is true.…”

“…learning about the harmful effect on others, and this as a result might interfere with their plan to proceed with that action. Sarch (2018) argues that willful ignorance involves a breach of the pro tanto duty to inform oneself, and therefore manifests a disregard to values and interests protected by the law (Alexander & Ferzan, 2009). Husak and Callender (2019) have, however, raised the concern that such an argument might risk violating the "principle of legality": i.e., the principle that, when a statute clearly requires the mental state of knowledge, the ordinary moral disapproval of knowing and willfully ignorant wrongdoers cannot form the basis for their equal conviction.…”

“…We also experimentally manipulated the second component in the basic account of WI: namely, the opportunity to acquire incriminating knowledge about one's action. Sarch (2018) argues that the difficulty or risk involved in acquiring knowledge determines whether WI agents are required to pursue it. When acquiring the incriminating knowledge is too burdensome, costly, or potentially harmful, the WI doctrine might be justifiably waived (Sarch, 2017).…”

Illustrating Cognitive Errors in Moral Decision Making

“…People deliberately avoid collecting information or becoming knowledgeable about situations that will force them to confront an ethical question because if they do not know something is wrong, they can't be held accountable for their choices (Sarch, 2018).…”