Criminalization is a new series arising from an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focusing on the principles and goals that should guide decisions about what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. Developing a normative theory of criminalization, the six volumes will tackle the key questions at the heart of the issue: By reference to what principles and goals should legislations decide what to criminalize? How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? And how should law enforcement officials apply the law's...

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...

We are said to face a crisis of over-criminalization: our criminal law has become chaotic, unprincipled, and over-expansive. This book 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.