Professor Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov
About
Biography
Bebhinn joined Surrey Law School in September 2017, and served as head of school from 2021 - 2024. She became Head of the School of Social Sciences at its inception in August 2024. Bebhinn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (where she was an exhibitioner), The Inns of Court School of Law, and Birmingham University. She is a member of Middle Temple and the Bar of Northern Ireland. Bebhinn's legal research has a philosophical focus, where the aim is to elucidate law's underlying concepts and normative rationales. Her approach to teaching also embeds this conceptual ambition. Current research focuses on the meaning and nature of action in law, and on the relationship between consciousness and human responsibility.
News
ResearchResearch interests
Bebhinn's enduring research interests are in jurisprudence and criminal law theory. Her book on criminal attempts, published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, is structured around an Anscombian account of intentional action. Recent and ongoing work explores our understanding of the mind and considers its implications for criminal responsibility, mens rea, omissions, and for defences. Bebhinn has begun to write a book on law, knowledge and consciousness.
Research interests
Bebhinn's enduring research interests are in jurisprudence and criminal law theory. Her book on criminal attempts, published by Cambridge University Press in 2015, is structured around an Anscombian account of intentional action. Recent and ongoing work explores our understanding of the mind and considers its implications for criminal responsibility, mens rea, omissions, and for defences. Bebhinn has begun to write a book on law, knowledge and consciousness.
Teaching
- Criminal Law.
Publications
Intention is at the heart of criminal law. If it is not the mens rea requirement found most often in offences, it is still the standard against which other grades of fault tend relatively to be judged. It has generated much controversy, as the crucial question, “Did the defendant intend X?” is resistant to clear answers. This paper argues that intention‐questions are difficult because intention is not the thing law takes it to be: Importantly, contrary to law's assumptions, it is neither a state of mind nor is it connected in an exclusive manner to the reasons for which we act.
A natural response to those who commit offence in highly disordered mental states is to consider that they did not know what they were doing at the time. This common response is compatible with the theoretical idea that in states of sane or insane automatism, self-awareness is lost, and our agential connection to our capacities breaks down. It is also consistent with a philosophically coherent grounding for exculpation in such cases, one based on the absence of non-observational knowledge, and on the defeat of agency that flows therefrom. The theoretical good sense in our natural response to affected agents (they did not know what they were doing!) reveals problems in the current law of automatism, and illuminates a more apt defence.
Rather than ask a common question—how brain ‘abnormalities’ affect moral assessments of the wrongdoer—this paper considers how our response to the good person might change on learning that their unusual brain enhances their goodness. Is the person with an extremely ‘good’ brain morally better, or worse indeed, than the rest of us? What, if anything, might it mean for us to be enhanced relative to the good person or for the ‘good’ person to be enhanced relative to us? What follows ethically for neuroenhancement and our approach to criminal offending? An insight, given added prominence by the change in focus, is that interventions have the potential not just to change the person, but to change what it is to be persons.
Additional publications
Journal Articles
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2021) 'Evil Trolley Turners; What they do and how they do it' Jurisprudence 12 (2):259-268 (2021)
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2017) 'Intention in Criminal Law: The Challenge from Non-Observational Knowledge' 30 Ratio Juris (4)
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2017) 'What it Means to Be Responsible for Action: Mind and Movement in Criminal Law.' 25 Journal of Law, Information and Science (3)
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2013). 'Law as a Claim-Maker: A Review of Stefano Bertea, The Normative Claim of Law'. Jurisprudence 4(2), 336-343.
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2012). 'Dworkin's Morality and its Limited Implications for Law'. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 25(1), 79-95.
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2011). 'The Figuring of Morality in Adjudication: Not so Special?'. Ratio Juris 24(3), 284-303.
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2010). "Possibility, Impossibility and Extraordinariness in Attempts". Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 23(1), 47-70.
Donnelly-lazarov, B. (2008). “M Pettenger (ed): 'The Social Construction of Climate Change: Power, Knowledge, Norms, Discourses'. Journal of Environmental Law 20(3), 468-469.
Donnelly-lazarov, B. (2007). 'Subjectivity and Law's Fields of Enquiry. Ratio Juris 20, 77-96.
Donnelly, B. & Bishop, P. (2007). Natural Law and Ecocentrism. Journal of Environmental Law 19(1), 89
Donnelly, B. (2007). Sentencing and Consequences: A Divergence between Blameworthiness and Liability to Punishment. New Criminal Law Review 10(3), 392
Donnelly-lazarov, B. (2006). 'The Epistemic Importance of the Factual Base in New and Traditional Natural Law Theory'. Law and Philosophy 25, 1-29.
Books
Donnelly-Lazarov, B., Patterson, D. & Raynor, P. (Eds.). Neurolaw and Responsibility for Action: Concepts, Crimes and Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. (2015). A Philosophy of Criminal Attempts (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Donnelly-lazarov, B. (2007). A Natural Law Approach to Normativity. Ashgate.
Book Chapters
Donnelly-Lazarov B., (2021) 'Neuroscience and the Moral Enhancement of Offenders: The Exceptionally ‘Good’ Brain as a Thought Experiment' In: Ligthart S., van Toor D., Kooijmans T., Douglas T., Meynen G. (eds) Neurolaw: Palgrave Studies in Law, Neuroscience, and Human Behavior (Palgrave Macmillan)
Donnelly-Lazarov, B. 'Intention as Non-Observational Knowledge: Rescuing Responsibility from the Brain' in Donnelly-Lazarov, B., Patterson, D. & Raynor, P. (Eds.). Neurolaw and Responsibility for Action: Concepts, Crimes and Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)
'Natural Law and the Possibility of Universal Normative Foundations'. In Fabri, H.R., Wolfrum, R. & Gogolin, J. (Ed.), Select Proceedings of the European Society of International Law. (pp. 255-266). Oxford: Hart Publishing