In this chapter I wish to consider the relationship between intent and motive in criminal law, and I will use the international crime of genocide as my main case study. Criminal lawyers, even those law professors who teach criminal law, often confuse motive and intent, and the same can be said of many philosophers. Popular speech certainly is rarely any help because many dictionaries list intention as a synonym for motive. In its most straightforward usage, intent or intention is what is aimed at, and motive is the reason or desire for acting. The standard confusion is easy to see here because it seems obvious that one way to characterize what our actions are aimed at is by reference to the reasons we have for so acting (for instance, the aim of my giving money to my daughter was because I wanted to help her out).

One way to link the actions of an individual to a crime perpetrated by a group concerns the participation of the individual in the larger enterprise. But a better way to indicate the guiltiness of that individual is by reference to his or her state of mind. Did the individual see himself or herself as aiming at the same things that the group did, or at least had the intent to participate in a group plan? Or was the individual's participation merely incidentally related to what the group had as its objective?