The Realm of Criminal Law

The Realm of Criminal Law PDF Author: R A Duff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191058580
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
We are said to face a crisis of over-criminalization: our criminal law has become chaotic, unprincipled, and over-expansive. This book proposes a normative theory of criminal law, and of criminalization, that shows how criminal law could be ordered, principled, and restrained. The theory is based on an account of criminal law as a distinctive legal practice that functions to declare and define a set of public wrongs, and to call to formal public account those who commit such wrongs; an account of the role that such practice can play in a democratic republic of free and equal citizens; and an account of the central features of such a political community, and of the way in which it constitutes its public realm-its civil order. Criminal law plays an important, but limited, role in such a political community in protecting, but also partly constituting, its civil order. On the basis of this account, we can see how such a political community will decide what kinds of conduct should be criminalized - not by applying one or more of the substantive master principles that theorists have offered, but by considering which kinds of conduct fall within its public realm (as distinct from the private realms that are not the polity's business), and which kinds of wrong within that realm require this distinctive kind of response (rather than one of the other kinds of available response). The outcome of such a deliberative process will probably be a more limited, and a more rational and principled, criminal law.

The Realm of Criminal Law

The Realm of Criminal Law PDF Author: R A Duff
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191058580
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
We are said to face a crisis of over-criminalization: our criminal law has become chaotic, unprincipled, and over-expansive. This book proposes a normative theory of criminal law, and of criminalization, that shows how criminal law could be ordered, principled, and restrained. The theory is based on an account of criminal law as a distinctive legal practice that functions to declare and define a set of public wrongs, and to call to formal public account those who commit such wrongs; an account of the role that such practice can play in a democratic republic of free and equal citizens; and an account of the central features of such a political community, and of the way in which it constitutes its public realm-its civil order. Criminal law plays an important, but limited, role in such a political community in protecting, but also partly constituting, its civil order. On the basis of this account, we can see how such a political community will decide what kinds of conduct should be criminalized - not by applying one or more of the substantive master principles that theorists have offered, but by considering which kinds of conduct fall within its public realm (as distinct from the private realms that are not the polity's business), and which kinds of wrong within that realm require this distinctive kind of response (rather than one of the other kinds of available response). The outcome of such a deliberative process will probably be a more limited, and a more rational and principled, criminal law.

The Constitution of the Criminal Law

The Constitution of the Criminal Law PDF Author: R. A. Duff
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191655279
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
The third book in the Criminalization series examines the constitutionalization of criminal law. It considers how the criminal law is constituted through the political processes of the state; how the agents of the criminal law can be answerable to it themselves; and finally, how the criminal law can be constituted as part of the international order. Addressing the ways in which and the grounds on which types of conduct can be justifiably criminalized, the first four chapters of this volume focus on the questions that arise from a consideration of the political constitution of the criminal law. The contributors then turn their attention to the role of the state, its institutions and officials, and their role not only as creators, enactors, interpreters, and enforcers of the criminal law, but also as subjects of it. How can the agents of the criminal law also be answerable to it? Finally discussion turns to how the criminal law can be constituted as part of an international order. Examining the relationships between domestic laws of different nation-states, and between domestic criminal law and international or transnational law, the chapters also look at the authority and jurisdiction of international criminal law itself, and its relationship to other dimensions of the international order. A vital examination of one of the most important topics in modern criminal legal theory, this volume raises new questions central to the study of the criminal law and offers new suggestions for addressing them.

The Realm of Criminal Law

The Realm of Criminal Law PDF Author: Antony Duff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191859595
Category : Criminal law
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
We are said to face a crisis of over-criminalisation: our criminal law has become chaotic, unprincipled, and over-expansive. This text proposes a theory of criminal law, as an institution that can play an important but limited role in the civil order of a political community: it shows how criminal law could be ordered, principled, and restrained.

The Boundaries of the Criminal Law

The Boundaries of the Criminal Law PDF Author: Lindsay Farmer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199600554
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This is the first book of a series on criminalization - examining the principles and goals that should guide what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. The first volume studies the scope and boundaries of the criminal law - asking what principled limits might be placed on criminalizing behaviour.

Overcriminalization

Overcriminalization PDF Author: Douglas Husak
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198043997
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The United States today suffers from too much criminal law and too much punishment. Husak describes the phenomena in some detail and explores their relation, and why these trends produce massive injustice. His primary goal is to defend a set of constraints that limit the authority of states to enact and enforce penal offenses. The book urges the weight and relevance of this topic in the real world, and notes that most Anglo-American legal philosophers have neglected it. Husak's secondary goal is to situate this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. He argues that many of the resources to reduce the size and scope of the criminal law can be derived from within the criminal law itself-even though these resources have not been used explicitly for this purpose. Additional constraints emerge from a political view about the conditions under which important rights such as the right implicated by punishment-may be infringed. When conjoined, these constraints produce what Husak calls a minimalist theory of criminal liability. Husak applies these constraints to a handful of examples-most notably, to the justifiability of drug proscriptions.

Criminal Law and the Man Problem

Criminal Law and the Man Problem PDF Author: Ngaire Naffine
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509918027
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
Men have always dominated the most basic precepts of the criminal legal world – its norms, its priorities and its character. Men have been the regulators and the regulated: the main subjects and objects of criminal law and by far the more dangerous sex. And yet men, as men, are still hardly talked about as the determining force within criminal law or in its exegesis. This book brings men into sharp focus, as the pervasively powerful interest group, whose wants and preoccupations have shaped the discipline. This constitutes the 'man problem' of criminal law. This new analysis probes the unacknowledged thinking of generations of influential legal men, which includes the psychological and legal techniques that have obscured the operation of bias, even to the legal experts themselves. It explains how men's interests have influenced the most cherished legal norms, especially the rules of human contact, which were designed to protect men from other men, while specifically securing lawful sexual access to at least one woman. The aim is to test the discipline's broadest commitments to civility, and its trajectory towards the final resolution, when men and women were declared to be equal and equivalent legal persons. In the process it exposes the morally and intellectually limiting consequences of male power.

The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law

The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030228118
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 794

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Book Description
This handbook consists of essays on contemporary issues in criminal law and their theoretical underpinnings. Some of the essays deal with the relationship between morality and criminalization. Others deal with criminalization in the context of specific crimes such as fraud, blackmail, and revenge pornography. The contributors also address questions of responsible agency such as the effects of addiction or insanity, and some deal with punishment, its mode and severity, and the justness of the state’s imposition of it. These chapters are authored by some of the most distinguished scholars in the fields of applied ethics, criminal law, and jurisprudence.

The Mind of the Criminal

The Mind of the Criminal PDF Author: Reid Griffith Fontaine
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521513766
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Discusses the excusing nature of traditional and non-traditional criminal law defenses and questions the structure of these based on scientific findings.

Criminalization

Criminalization PDF Author: Antony Duff
Publisher: Criminalization
ISBN: 019872635X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This volume examines the political morality of the criminal law, exploring general principles and theories of criminalisation. Chapters provide accounts of the criminal law in the light of ambitious theories about moral and political philosophy - republicanism and contractarianism, or reflect upon on the success of important theories of criminalisation by viewing them in a novel light.

Legality Matters

Legality Matters PDF Author: Gillian MacNeil
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9462654433
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
This book examines the way international criminal courts and tribunals have interpreted the crimes against humanity proscription of other inhumane acts. This clause is consistently used in spite of the long list of more specific offences forbidden as crimes against humanity. The volume proposes that the current approach is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the clause. Properly understood, the clause is an invitation to courts to create and apply retroactive criminal laws. This leads to a problem. A prohibition on the use of retroactive criminal laws, one which admits no exceptions, is deeply embedded in international law. The author argues that it is time to revisit the assumption that retroactive criminal laws can never be deployed in a fair legal system. Drawing lessons from an exploration on the way the prohibition on retroactive laws is applied in practice, she proposes a new framework for understanding the clause proscribing the commission of other inhumane acts. This book will be of relevance to anyone interested in international criminal law or criminal law theory. Gillian MacNeil is Assistant Professor at Robson Hall, the Faculty of Law of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.