Intention in Action: A Pragmatic Approach to Criminal Characterisation in an Egyptian Context
Résumé
In criminal matters, intentionality constitutes one of the central criteria in the work of legal characterisation. This research undertakes to show how magistrates and, more particularly, public prosecutors organise their activity, in practice, around the establishment of this component of the crime. After having made a few preliminary remarks concerning the recourse to a pragmatic approach in the study of law, I shall give a summary sketch of the literature in the theory of law pertaining to this question. The essentially semantic nature of these approaches will be noted as they attempt to comprehend intention as a philosophical notion independent of the institutional context of its use. I shall then endeavour proposing a pragmatic approach in which intentionality is viewed as the result of interactions integrated in the judicial institutional context which obliges professional actors to orient themselves toward the production of a legally relevant decision. This leads me, in conclusion, to observe that lay actors adjust themselves to this constraining institutional context, influenced by inductive reasoning of professionals and by their own anticipation of the means which would enable them to obtain the most favourable or the least damaging solution for themselves from the place and the persons with whom they are confronted or simply the solution most conforming to the routine accomplishment of their work. Preliminary remarks: the production of legality The pragmatic study of the legal process which leads to the sanctioning of an intentional act, an act where wrong has been done to others, requires a few preliminary remarks of an epistemological and methodological nature.
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