The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law
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| Anteprima |
This
volume brings together a collection of essays, many of them scholarly
classics, which form part of the debates on three questions central to
criminal law theory. The first of these questions is: what conduct
should be necessary for criminal liability, and what sufficient? The
answer to this question has wider implications for the debate about
morality enforcement given the concern that the "harm principle" may
have collapsed under its own weight. Secondly, essays address the
question of what culpability should be necessary for criminal liability,
and what sufficient? Here, the battles continue over whether the
formulation of doctrines - such as the insanity defense, criminal
negligence, strict liability, and others - should ignore or minimize the
extent of an offender's blameworthiness in the name of effective
crime-control. Or, are methods of accommodating the tension now in
sight? Finally, essays consider the question of how criminal law rules
should be best organized into a coherent and clarifying doctrinal
structure. The structure grown by the common law process competes not
only with that of modern comprehensive codifications, such as the
America Law Institute's Model Penal Code, but also with alternative
structures imagined but not yet tried.
