ABSTRACT
The law specifies a large diversity of government responses to the intentional behavior of citizens, often specifying a different response, or no response, to happenings that are not the products of agency. For instance, a contractual term by which the parties intended to be bound is far more likely to be enforced; if the testator of a will intended a particular person to inherit his property, the courts are far more likely to give the property to that person; whether injuries caused were also intended might be crucial both for determining liability for those injuries and for determining the size of the damage award; a person who drives past a bank might be guilty of attempted bank robbery, but only if he intended to rob the bank; someone in possession of a large quantity of cocaine is guilty of a much more serious crime if he intended to distribute it; what Congress intended when they drafted a statute often determines whether that statute applies to a particular case; what the long-dead framers of the Constitution intended to refer to with the words “cruel and unusual” is central to the question of whether or not a particular kind of punishment, such as the death penalty, or “chemical castration,” can be administered by a state government. And so on. In all of these cases, what the government is authorized to do, under the law, varies with the intentionality of the behavior in question.
