Enoch discusses the supposed existence of moral luck and it’s connection to the law. To start Enoch outlines the baseline argument that he will evaluate in his peice. This consists of three premises. The first premise states that somone who attempts murder and fails is equally blameworthy as someone who attempts the murder and succeeds. The next premise states that punishment should be proportionate to moral blameworthiness of the offender. Lastly, the argument concludes that attempted murderers and successful murderers should be equally punished. This argument is an instance of the phenomena of the denial of moral luck and Enoch will discuss moral blameworthiness as well as the legal standpoint of his conclusions.

Enoch describes the idea of moral luck as being that an agent did not have control over the action he caused, yet he is to blame or praise despite this. Enoch frames a control condition as being the belief you are morally responsible for something to the extent that it is under ones control. This may seem obvious in everyday life, we tend to blame a person for something they did until finding out that they were not truly at fault. This seems to already deny the existence of moral luck. However, Enoch goes on to define three types of relevent moral luck. First being consequential moral luck, this is the idea that one’s moral status is determined by the outcome of what one does. Circumstantial moral luck, being luck in the morally relevant circumstances on finds oneself in, or the moral tests or opportunities one faces.Constitutive moral luck, this is luck in the character traits and dispositions one finds oneselves in when arriving at the morally relevant scene (Enoch, 44).

By discussing these types of luck he explains possible reasons to defend moral luck as it seems to intuitively make sense. Yet they negate the control condition discussed earlier. He evaluates arguments against moral luck explaining the importance and reliance that people have on this control condition. The legal aspect of this is different because there is legal luck in the sense that attempted murderers and murderers may be equally morally blameworthy but it is not the immediate conclusion that they should be equally punished. This is where the second premise comes into play, that punishment should be proportional to moral blameworthiness. However, this strong of a premise is often difficult to accept in its strongest nature (Enoch 50). Overall the argument is interesting because it exemplifies how moral blameworthiness does not correlate exactly to the legal punishment that should be enacted.