This volume analyses the prospects and challenges of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in context. The book is for all readers interested in African institutions and contemporary global challenges of peace, security, human rights, and international law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law reflects the continued transformation of criminal law into a global discipline, providing scholars with a comprehensive international resource, a common point of entry into cutting edge contemporary research and a snapshot of the state and scope of the field. To this end, the Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter, disciplinarily, geographically, and systematically. Its contributors include current and future research leaders representing a variety of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise, and research agendas. The Handbook is divided into four parts: Approaches & Methods (I), Systems & Methods (II), Aspects & Issues (III), and Contexts & Comparisons (IV). Part I includes essays exploring various methodological approaches to criminal law (such as criminology, feminist studies, and history). Part II provides an overview of systems or models of criminal law, laying the foundation for further inquiry into specific conceptions of criminal law as well as for comparative analysis (such as Islamic, Marxist, and military law). Part III covers the three aspects of the penal process: the definition of norms and principles of liability (substantive criminal law), along with a less detailed treatment of the imposition of norms (criminal procedure) and the infliction of sanctions (prison law). Contributors consider the basic topics traditionally addressed in scholarship on the general and special parts of the substantive criminal law (such as jurisdiction, mens rea, justifications, and excuses). Part IV places criminal law in context, both domestically and transnationally, by exploring the contrasts between criminal law and other species of law and state power and by investigating criminal law's place in the projects of comparative law, transnational, and international law.
This book combines a careful philosophical discussion of the rationale justifying self-defence with a detailed discussion of the range of statutory self-defence requirements, as well as discussions of numerous other relevant issues (i.e. putative self-defense, excessive self-defense, earlier guilt and battered women). The book argues that before formulating definitions for each aspect of self-defence (necessity, proportionality, retreat, immediacy, mental element, etc.) it is imperative to determine the proper rationale for self-defence and, only then to derive the appropriate solutions. The f.
This book is a comprehensive analysis of the criminal defence of self-defence from a philosophical, legal and human rights perspective. The primary focus is on self-defence as a defence to homicide, as this is the most difficult type of self-defensive force to justify. Although not always recognised as such, self-defence is a contentious defence, permitting as it does the victim of an attack to preserve her life at the expense of another. If one holds that all human life is of equal value, explaining why this is permissible poses something of a challenge. It is particularly difficult to explain where the aggressor is, for reasons of non-age or insanity for example, not responsible for her actions. The first part of the book is devoted to identifying the proper theoretical basis of a claim of self-defence. It examines the classification of defences, and the concepts of justification and excuse in particular, and locates self-defence within this classification. It considers the relationship between self-defence and the closely related defences of duress and necessity. It then proceeds critically to analyse various philosophical explanations of why self-defensive killing is justified, before concluding that the most convincing account is one that draws on the right to life with an accompanying theory of forfeiture. The book then proceeds to draw upon this analysis to examine various aspects of the law of self-defence. There is detailed analysis of the way in which, on a human rights approach, it is appropriate to treat the issues of retreat, imminence of harm, self-generated self-defence, mistake and proportionality, with a particular focus on whether lethal force is ever permissible in protecting property or in preventing rape. The analysis draws on material from all of the major common law jurisdictions. The book concludes with an examination of the implications that the European Convention on Human Rights might have for the law of self-defence, especially in the areas of mistaken belief and the degree of force permissible to protect property.
The law relating to general defences is one of the most important areas in the criminal law, yet the current state of the law in the United Kingdom reveals significant problems in the adoption of a consistent approach to their doctrinal and theoretical underpinnings, as exemplified by a number of recent developments in legislation and case law. A coherent and joined-up approach is still missing. This volume provides an analysis of the main contentious areas in British law, and proposes ways forward for reform. The collection includes contributions from leading experts across various jurisdictions. Part I examines the law in the United Kingdom, with specialist contributions on Irish and Scottish law. Part II consists of contributions by authors from a number of foreign jurisdictions, all written to a common research grid for maximum comparability, which provide a wider background of how other legal systems treat problems relating to general defences in the context of the criminal law, and which may serve as points of reference for domestic law reform.
In NATO Rules of Engagement, Camilla Guldahl Cooper provides a thorough analysis of NATO rules of engagement, and offers clarity on a concept which despite its considerable political, strategic and operational importance, is often misunderstood.
This book combines a careful philosophical discussion of the rationale justifying self-defence with a detailed discussion of the range of statutory self-defence requirements, as well as discussions of numerous other relevant issues (i.e. putative self-defense, excessive self-defense, earlier guilt and battered women). The book argues that before formulating definitions for each aspect of self-defence (necessity, proportionality, retreat, immediacy, mental element, etc.) it is imperative to determine the proper rationale for self-defence and, only then to derive the appropriate solutions. The first part contains an in-depth discussion of why society allows a justification for acts but does not excuse the actor from criminal liability, and the author critically analyzes current theories (culpability of the aggressor; autonomy of the attacked person; protection of the social-legal order; balancing interests; choice of the lesser evil) and points out the weaknesses of each theory before proposing a new theory to explain the justification of self-defence. The new theory is that for the full justification of self-defence, a balance of interests must be struck between the expected physical injury to the attacked person and the expected physical injury to the aggressor, as well as the relevant abstract factors: the autonomy of the attacked person, the culpability of the aggressor, and the social-legal order. The author demonstrates how ignoring one or more of these factors leads to erroneous results and how the proposed rationale can be applied to develop solutions to the complex questions raised.
Handbook for law students and criminal law practitioners. Third edition updating the analysis of the defences available under the law up to 1995, including a much more extensive analysis of provisions of the various criminal codes than previous editions. Also outlines the defences available to commonwealth crimes as well as states with both common law and statutory criminal systems. Includes a table of contents, table of cases, table of statutes and an index. O'Connor is a barrister at law and formerly reader in law at the ANU and Fairall is professor of law at James Cook University and adjunct professor at Bond University. Also available in paperback.
