Ascriptive Responsibility

Ascriptive responsibility is a concept proposed by H.L.A. Hart in the 1940s that involves the legal and social judgments placed on individuals who have committed a crime or a moral wrong. Hart proposed that ascriptive responsibility is the judgment placed on a person who has done an illegal act or wrong behavior and has been sentenced to a punishment. It is ascribing responsibility to a person or yourself. Instead of the label of 'guilty' being a descriptive form of responsibility Hart wrote that it was an ascriptive one- it was ascribing the responsibility to an individual.