The Criminal Law’s Person

Description

The state’s use of the threat, and imposition, of punishment to regulate conduct is thought (or at least said) by many to be legitimised by the idea that the criminal law’s burdens only fall on those who are blameworthy for their conduct. However, the formal concept of ‘blameworthiness’ needs to be made substantive. This puts various ideas regarding the criminal law’s person at the heart of debates about blame, guilt and responsibility. How is the criminal law’s person constructed, by whom, and with what disciplinary norms? How is it threatened by new ‘knowledge’, and how do those threats play out amongst the various stakeholders who claim the criminal law’s person as ‘theirs’? To address these and cognate questions, this volume brings together an international group of academics to engage with the criminal law’s person from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Acknowledgements Contents List of Contributors 1. Introduction: The Criminal Law’s Person I. Criminal Justice: Political Not Metaphysical II. The Criminal Law and the Criminal Law's Person(s) III. Contested Sources, Contested Purposes IV. Outline of the Volume 2. The Criminal Law’s Various Persons I. Introduction II. Ex Ante: Criminalisation, Policing and Prosecution III. Ex Post: Conviction and Sentencing IV. 'Science' and the Criminal Law's Various Persons 3. The Criminal Law’s Person and Normative Elements in the Legal Definition of Excusing Circumstances I. Introduction II. The Presumption of Guilt in the Normative Concept of the Criminal Law's Person III. The Presumption of Guilt and Excusing Circumstances in Criminal Law IV. Conclusions 4. Standard-Setting versus Tracking ‘Profound’ Blameworthiness: What should be the Role of the Rules for Ascription of Responsibility? I. Introduction II. Criminal Law Backwards and Forwards III. What If? A Flexible Within IV. A Few Examples V. Closing Comments: The Criminal Law and Everyday People 5. Attributability and Accountability in the Criminal Law I. Two Concepts of Responsibility II. Two Routes to Criminal Responsibility: The Attributability Route III. Two Routes To Criminal Responsibility: The Accountability Route IV. Two Persons of Criminal Responsibility V. Attributability Versus Accountability 6. In Search of Criminal Law’s Person I. Introduction II. Legal Personality III. Responsible Agency in Criminal Law IV. Conclusion 7. Victims Who Victimise: Guilt in Political Theory
and Moral Psychology I. The Problem of Perpetrators as Victims Who Victimise II. Normative Political Theory: The Problem of the Ideal and the Actual III. The Moral Psychology of Guilt: Towards a Moral Grammar IV. The Guilt of Perpetrators as Victims who Victimise 8. Responsibility Beyond Blame: Unfree Agency and the
Moral Psychology of Criminal Law’s Persons I. Introduction II. Blame and Blameworthiness III. The Tyranny of the Past IV. Unfree Agency V. The Moral Psychology of Heteronomy VI. The Antinomy of Responsibility VII. Responsibility, Reification and Respect VIII. The Grammar of Taking Responsibility 9. Implicit Bias, Self-Defence and the Reasonable Person I. Introduction II. Unreasonable Persons and Biased Beliefs III. Racism and Self-Defence IV. US Law and the 'Reasonable-Belief Rule' V. Evaluating the Reasonable Person Standards VI. English and Welsh Law and the Genuine Belief Rule VII. A Palliative Solution VIII. Concluding Remarks Index