This book is a critical and historical study of the theory of criminal law which examines, in particular, the relationship between legal tradition and national identity, while developing a radically new approach to questions of responsibility and subjectivity. Previous studies have focused either on the philosophical bases of the criminal law or on the sociology and social history of crime, but there has been little exchange between the two. Lindsay Farmer's is one of the first extended attempts to draw on both fields in order to analyse the body of theorising about the criminal law as a...

This book examines the relationship between legal tradition and national identity to offer a critical and historical perspective on the study of criminal law. Developing a radically different approach to questions of responsibility and subjectivity, it combines appreciation of the institutional and historical context in which criminal law is practiced with an informed understanding of the law itself. Drawing on original research into the development of Scottish criminal justice, it offers the first full-length critique of modern criminal law theory.

Modern Histories of Crime and Punishment showcases a variety of disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical approaches that, taken together, frame historical analysis in the study and teaching of criminal law. Featuring work by historians, lawyers, theorists, and sociologists, Modern Histories approaches the history of crime and punishment not as the freestanding study of a distinct institution or body of legal doctrine, but as part of a broader inquiry into the webs of governance and control that constitute social and political life.

The trial is central to the institutional framework of criminal justice. It provides the procedural link between crime and punishment, and is the forum in which both guilt and innocence and sentence are determined. Its continuing significance is evidenced by the heated responses drawn by recent British government proposals to reform rules of criminal procedure and evidence so as to alter the status of the trial within the criminal justice process and to limit the role of the jury. Yet for all of the attachment to trial by jury and to principles safeguarding the right to a fair trial there has...

What are the aims of a criminal trial? What social functions should it perform? And how is the trial as a political institution linked to other institutions in a democratic polity? If we understand a criminal trial as calling a defendant to answer to a charge of criminal wrongdoing and, if he is judged to be responsible for such wrongdoing, what follows to account for his conduct? A normative theory of the trial-an account of what trials ought to be and of what ends they should serve-must take these central aspects of the trial seriously, but they raise a number of difficult questions. They...

Modern Histories of Crime and Punishment showcases a variety of disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical approaches that, taken together, frame historical analysis in the study and teaching of criminal law. Featuring work by historians, lawyers, theorists, and sociologists, Modern Histories approaches the history of crime and punishment not as the freestanding study of a distinct institution or body of legal doctrine, but as part of a broader inquiry into the webs of governance and control that constitute social and political life.

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...

The Criminalization series arose from an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focusing on the principles that might guide decisions about what kinds of conduct should be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. Developing a normative theory of criminalization, the series tackles the key questions at the heart of the issue: what principles and goals should guide legislators in deciding what to criminalize? How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? How should law enforcement officials apply the law's specifications of offences?
The...