Crime, Reason and History: A Critical Introduction to Criminal Law

by Alan Norrie

• ISBN13: 9780406932464
• ISBN10: 0406932468
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Lexis Nexis

Summary

Crime, Reason and History provides an alternative approach to the study of the general principles of criminal law. It emphasises, in contrast to orthodox texts, the tensions and contradictions at the law's heart. The author outlines the themes of responsibility, rationality and justice which govern the orthodox criminal law text. He traces these to the early nineteenth century reform of the criminal law and notes conflicts within reform ideologies relating to the idea of the 'responsible individual'. He then takes the reader through the bulk of the criminal law's 'general part' showing how conflicts from reform ideology emerge within criminal law. An historical and political logic underlies its illogicalities, giving it its 'shape'. The author presents a sceptical critique of the liberal positivist tradition in criminal law scholarship, and a social analysis of both its practical necessity and intellectual impossibility. He shows how the ideology of individual legal justice was imposed as a means of excluding alternative political voices, while recognising its importance for the survival of the liberal polity.

Table of Contents

Preface to the second edition	vii
Preface to the first edition	ix
Table of statues	xix
List of cases	xxi
Prologue: A brief history of the ancient juridical city of Fictionopolis	1	(4)
PART I: CONTEXT	5	(28)
Contradiction, critique and criminal law	7	(8)
Introduction	7	(1)
Rationality and Legality	8	(2)
Individual Justice	10	(2)
Understanding the Contradictions	12	(3)
The historical context of criminal doctrine	15	(18)
Introduction	15	(1)
Legal Individualism and Social Individuality	16	(8)
Justice and deterrence in the penal theory of the Enlightenment	16	(1)
The reformers' task	16	(1)
Retributive justice	17	(1)
Utilitarian deterrence	18	(1)
The need for legality	19	(1)
Interests and ideology in reform penal theory	19	(1)
Middle-class interests	20	(1)
Middle-class interests and moral-legal individualism	20	(1)
Abstractions and realities	21	(2)
The character of modern law: its repressive individualism	23	(1)
Legal Individualism and Social Control	24	(4)
The common law and the criminal law in history	25	(1)
Logic, `policy' and social class	26	(2)
The Foundational Tensions of Criminal Doctrine	28	(5)
Law's psychological individualism	28	(1)
Law's political individualism	29	(4)
PART II: MENS REA	33	(74)
Motive and intention	35	(24)
Introduction	35	(1)
Motive and Intention: Desocialising Individual Life	36	(10)
Conflicting motives and common intentions	36	(3)
Hidden motives	39	(1)
Individual morality	39	(1)
Political morality	40	(1)
Social mores	41	(3)
Informal remedies to the formal politics of denial	44	(1)
Discretion to prosecute	44	(1)
Discretion to convict	45	(1)
Discretion in sentencing	45	(1)
Indirect Intention: Legal and Moral Judgment	46	(12)
Two approaches to direct and indirect (oblique) intention	47	(1)
The formal psychological (`orthodox subjectivist') approach	47	(2)
The morally substantive approach	49	(1)
Summary of the two approaches	50	(1)
The law of oblique intention: Moloney	50	(2)
Guidelines to a jury in Moloney	52	(1)
Moloney's intended practical impact	52	(1)
Having one's subjectivist cake and eating it: interpreting Moloney	53	(1)
Guidelines to a jury: Hancock and Shankland	53	(1)
Hancock and Shankland's practical impact	54	(1)
The Moloney-Woollin axis	55	(1)
Woollin and the parameters of indirect intention	55	(1)
Woollin and the two approaches to intention	56	(1)
`Entitled to find' and the moral threshold	56	(2)
Conclusion	58	(1)
Recklessness	59	(22)
Introduction	59	(2)
Subjectivism and Objectivism in the Law of Recklessness	61	(9)
The judgment in Caldwell	61	(2)
Contradiction within Caldwell	63	(2)
A limitation of the orthodox subjectivist approach	65	(1)
A problem with the objectivist approach	66	(3)
A `third way'? Introducing `practical indifference'	69	(1)
Recklessness as Practical Indifference	70	(6)
The concept of practical indifference	70	(2)
Two questions about practical indifference	72	(1)
Practical indifference and determinacy	72	(1)
Is practical indifference subjective?	73	(1)
The political limits of practical indifference	74	(2)
The Historical Roots of Recklessness	76	(4)
`Factual' versus `moral' recklessness	76	(1)
The roots of orthodox subjectivism	77	(2)
An objection: the `objective' question in orthodox subjectivism	79	(1)
Conclusion	80	(1)
Strict and corporate liability	81	(26)
Introduction	81	(2)
Differentiation: Strict Liability	83	(9)
Introduction	83	(2)
The ideological and practical context of the strict liability offence	85	(2)
Strict liability and `real' crime: a presumption of mens rea?	87	(3)
Conclusion	90	(2)
Assimilation: Corporate Liability	92	(11)
Introduction	92	(1)
Conflating individual and corporate fault: the identity doctrine	93	(2)
The responsibility of an organisation: aggregation and beyond	95	(1)
Aggregation	95	(1)
An organisational approach	96	(1)
Problems with the organisational approach	96	(2)
Law reform proposals	98	(1)
Conclusion	99	(1)
Responsibility, social complexity and the corporate form	100	(1)
Economic integration and corporate responsibility	100	(1)
Social co-ordination and corporate punishment	101	(2)
Conclusion	103	(4)
PART III: ACTUS REUS	107	(44)
Acts and omissions	109	(25)
Introduction	109	(2)
Acts	110	(1)
Omissions	111	(1)
Acts	111	(9)
Conflicting conceptions of voluntariness	112	(1)
Physical involuntariness versus moral involuntariness	112	(2)
Physical involuntariness versus moral voluntariness	114	(1)
Limiting involuntariness	115	(1)
The requirement of unconsciousness	115	(1)
Intoxication, physical involuntariness and moral voluntariness	116	(3)
Denying involuntariness in situational liability cases	119	(1)
Conclusion	120	(1)
Omissions	120	(12)
Constructing the concept of an omission	121	(1)
The drowning infant/stranger	122	(1)
Killing and letting die	123	(1)
Juridifying the concept of an omission	124	(2)
Abstract right and social need	126	(2)
Beyond individualism?	128	(1)
The line drawing problem	128	(2)
Specific duties of citizenship?	130	(2)
Conclusion	132	(2)
Causation	134	(17)
Introduction	134	(2)
A Critical Approach to Causation	136	(1)
Liberal Principles for the Imputation of Causation	137	(4)
Analysing the Causation Cases	141	(8)
The intervention of a new voluntary act	141	(3)
The intervention of an abnormal occurrence	144	(1)
The medical treatment cases	144	(3)
The `eggshell skull' case	147	(1)
The regulatory context	148	(1)
Conclusion	149	(2)
PART IV: DEFENCES	151	(46)
Necessity and duress	153	(21)
Introduction	153	(1)
Necessity	154	(10)
Necessity's ambiguous history	155	(1)
Judgment and context: the case of Dudley and Stephens	156	(3)
The re-emergence of necessity	159	(1)
Necessity as Pandora's Box	159	(2)
Duress of circumstances	161	(1)
Medical necessity	162	(2)
Duress	164	(7)
Conflicting positions in the recent murder cases	164	(1)
The conflict within the basic arguments	165	(3)
Further limits	168	(1)
Mistake of duress	168	(1)
Standard of resistance	169	(1)
Self-induced duress	170	(1)
Conclusion	171	(3)
Insanity and diminished responsibility	174	(23)
Introduction	174	(2)
Law Against Psychiatry: The Social Control of Madness	176	(3)
Law's rational subject	176	(1)
The asylum and psychiatry	176	(2)
Conflicting views of crime	178	(1)
Between Law and Psychiatry: The Legal Defences	179	(6)
Insanity	179	(1)
The breadth of the Rules: `disease of the mind'	180	(1)
The narrowness of the Rules: the two cognitive tests	180	(2)
Diminished responsibility	182	(1)
Meaning of terms	182	(1)
Conflict and co-operation in the law	183	(2)
Law and Psychiatry in Conflict: The Politics of Law Reform	185	(3)
The post-Hinckley debate in the United States	186	(1)
Reform proposals in England and Wales	187	(1)
Law and Psychiatry Combined: The Decontextualisation of Madness	188	(5)
Covering up for the law	190	(1)
Poverty and the insanity defence	190	(1)
Women and diminished responsibility	191	(1)
Limits to compassion and pragmatism	192	(1)
Covering up for society: men killing women	192	(1)
Conclusion	193	(4)
The nature of madness	193	(2)
Law and psychiatry: consensus and conflict	195	(2)
PART V: CONCLUDING	197	(37)
Sentencing	199	(23)
Introduction	199	(2)
Deterrence	201	(6)
Individual deterrence and its social context	203	(2)
Individual versus general deterrence	205	(2)
Retributivism	207	(7)
Introduction: `just deserts' and sentencing	208	(1)
Legitimating the allocation of punishment	209	(1)
The ideal and the actual in classical retributivism	210	(1)
`Just deserts in an unjust society'?	210	(2)
Limiting punishment through proportionality	212	(1)
The classical approach	212	(1)
Cardinal and ordinal proportionality	213	(1)
The living standards analysis	214	(1)
Rehabilitation and Incapacitation	214	(4)
Individualism versus individualisation	215	(1)
Individualisation and sentencing	216	(1)
Rehabilitation	216	(1)
Incapacitation	217	(1)
Sentencing Ideologies: The Internal Dynamic of Conflict	218	(2)
The antinomies of sentencing	218	(1)
A dominant rationale? The Criminal Justice Act 1991	219	(1)
Conclusion	220	(2)
Conclusion	222	(12)
The Political Nature of Juridical Individualism	222	(3)
Psychological individualism	223	(1)
Political individualism	224	(1)
Juridical Individualism in the Criminal Law	225	(6)
Criminal Law as Praxiology	231	(3)
Notes	234	(19)
Bibliography	253	(12)
Index	265	(6)
Index of names	271