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.
This accessible text enables criminology and criminal justice students to understand and critically evaluate criminal law in the context of criminal justice and wider social issues. The book explains criminal law comprehensively, covering both general principles and specific types of criminal offences. It examines criminal law in its social context, as well as considering how it is used by the criminal justice processes and agencies which enforce it in practice. Covering all the different theoretical approaches that the student of criminology and criminal justice will need to understand, the book provides learning tools such as: -chapter objectives - making the structure of the book easy to follow for students -questions for discussion and student exercises - helping students to think critically about the ideas and concepts in each chapter, and to undertake further independent and reflective study -′definition boxes′ explaining key concepts - helping students who are not familiar with specialist criminal law terminology to understand what the key basic concepts in criminal law really mean in practice -a companion Website which incorporates a range of resources for lecturers and students.
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.
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 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.
This book explores the philosophical underpinnings of the law's major doctrines concerning actus reus, mens rea, and defences, showing that they are not always driven by culpability but are grounded also in principles of moral responsibility, ascriptive responsibility, and wrongdoing.
By defining appropriate boundaries for the defence of insanity and the doctrine of automatism, this book presents a consistent and principled approach to the reform of mental state defences. In particular, by undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of the various factors that inform these defences the book concludes with several practical and robust reform proposals There are three objectives that underpin the suggested reform proposals. First, to ensure that an accused will be able to raise a defence of insanity for involuntary conduct arising from mental disorder even where he or she is aware of the nature and quality of such conduct. Second, to provide principled means by which to establish the criminal responsibility of an accused for conduct performed in a state of drug-induced psychosis. Third, to ensure that criminal conduct arising from a state of ’impaired consciousness’ does not automatically result in the outright acquittal of an accused. In articulating the competing demands that must be balanced in order to secure a principled approach to the reform of mental state defences the book will be of relevance to all common law countries.
"[This book analyzes] the defences to criminal prosecutions both at common law and under statute in all jurisdictions of Australia. The various defences are described...together with the circumstances under which they can be raised and how several defences can be combined. The inter-relationship of the defences is also fully explored, with an eye to jurisdictional differences. It also includes additional analysis of Infanticide and Infancy as well as touching upon the Commonwealth Criminal Code."--
Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this book provides a practical analysis of criminal law in Poland. An introduction presents the necessary background information about the framework and sources of the criminal justice system, and then proceeds to a detailed examination of the grounds for criminal liability, the justification of criminal offences, the defences that diminish or excuse criminal liability, the classification of criminal offences, and the sanctions system. Coverage of criminal procedure focuses on the organization of investigations, pre-trial proceedings, trial stage, and legal remedies. A final part describes the execution of sentences and orders, the prison system, and the extinction of custodial sanctions or sentences. Its succinct yet scholarly nature, as well as the practical quality of the information it provides, make this book a valuable resource for criminal lawyers, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and criminal court judges handling cases connected with Poland. Academics and researchers, as well as the various international organizations in the field, will welcome this very useful guide, and will appreciate its value in the study of comparative criminal law.
