Excusing Mistakes of Law

Causation, compulsion, and involuntariness.

This article first addresses the persistent confusion between causation and excuse. It demonstrates that causation is not the equivalent of compulsion and that causation per se is not an excusing condition. Then the article examines the conceptual and practical difficulties presented by the excuse that is variously labeled "compulsion," "involuntariness," "volitional problems," "irresistible im...

Excusing Harmless Errors in the Execution of Wills: A Report on Australia's Tranquil Revolution in Probate Law

Legal Aspects of Unauthorized Bank Payments

 One of the complex matters in banking law is the problems and mistakes which occur in the process of bank payments. Mistake of banker or error in processing of information in bank networks may result in payment delay or paying money to the account of a person other than who was really intended. This article is about rules for allocation of losses between account holders implicated and t...

Examining the Ethical Foundations of Compensation for Mistakes and Forgeries in the Preparation of Official Documents

Background: Preparing a formal transaction document is one of the specific duties of notaries public, which requires the use and observance of various substantive and formal conditions. Failure to comply with any of these conditions can lead to the annulment of the document by the court and the responsibility to compensate the clerks. Compensation by the clerks in various articles such as Artic...

Justifications for the insanity defence in Great Britain and the United States: the conflicting rationales of morality and compassion.

The law of excuses is a deeply entrenched concept in Anglo-American jurisprudence which has persisted since the Middle Ages.' The excusing conditions of necessity, mistake, duress and diminished mental capacity all embrace the unitary principle that a person is not culpable, and cannot be held criminally responsible, if he had no control over his behavior.~ All the excusing conditions, then, in...