Fault In Criminal Law

This volume presents a comparative examination of the issue of fault in criminal law. Extant law reveals significant problems in adoption of consistent approaches to doctrinal and theoretical underpinnings of fault liability and culpability thresholds in criminal law. This has been exemplified by a plethora of recent jurisprudential authorities revealing varying degrees of confusion and vacillation. This collection focuses on fault liability for inculpation with contributions from leading specialists from different jurisdictions presenting alternative perspectives. The book addresses three specific elements within the arena of fault, embracing an overarching synergy between them. This structure facilitates an examination of UK provisions, with specialist contributions on domestic law, and in contrasting these provisions against alternative domestic jurisdictions as well as comparative contributions addressing a particularised research grid for content. The comparative chapters provide a wider background of how other legal systems treat a variety of specialised issues relating to fault elements in the context of the criminal law. With contributions from leading experts in the field, the book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, academics, and practitioners working in this area.

While a functional concept of crime under the common law has ancient roots, theoretical and doctrinal formulations emerged only in the 19th century. Here, scholar Adekemi Odujirin interweaves two narratives relating to crime--one contextual and functional, the other jurisprudential and theoretical. The result transcends traditional inquiry by identifying and exploring the normative conclusions embodied in the concept of crime.

Yeo's work examines the laws of England, Australia and India pertaining to the fault elements required for the crimes of murder and manslaughter. It contends that the Indian laws are superior and suggests a set of draft provisions which could comprise a viable model for reform of the English and Australian laws. The work is directly relevant to issues being considered in the development of the Model Criminal Code.

What is the definition of 'crime'? Law and Crime helps the criminologist to understand how the law constructs crime and how one might engage in critical analysis of such legal constructions. It uses a thematic approach to comprehensively explore the relationship between criminal conduct, criminal justice and the law. The book introduces key topics in criminal law scholarship for criminologists, including: criminalization fault and criminal responsibility corporate liability the production of criminal guilt the nature of judicial punishment. Aimed at students with no prior knowledge of law, the book includes many useful features to enhance understanding, from chapter overviews and key terms to study questions and suggestions for further reading. The Key Approaches to Criminology series celebrates the removal of traditional barriers between disciplines and, specifically, reflects criminology’s interdisciplinary nature and focus. It brings together some of the leading scholars working at the intersections of criminology and related subjects. Each book in the series helps readers to make intellectual connections between criminology and other discourses, and to understand the importance of studying crime and criminal justice within the context of broader debates. The series is intended to have appeal across the entire range of undergraduate and postgraduate studies and beyond, comprising books which offer introductions to the fields as well as advancing ideas and knowledge in their subject areas.

This book challenges the assumptions of modern criminal law that insanity is a natural, legally and medically defined phenomenon (covering a range of medical disorders). By doing so, it paves the way for a new perspective on insanity and can serve as the basis for a new approach to insanity in modern criminal law. The book covers the following aspects: the structure of the principle of fault in modern criminal law, the development of the insanity defense in criminal law, tangential in personam defenses in criminal law and their implications for insanity and the legal mechanism of reproduction of fault. The focus is on the Anglo-American and European-Continental legal systems. Given the attention consistently drawn by international and domestic events in this context, the book will be of interest to a broad and growing international audience.

Honore (formerly civil law, Oxford U.) develops themes implicit in his and Herbert Hart's 1985 Causation in the Law. In seven essays, he proposes a theory of outcome responsibility that finds intervening in the world to be sufficient to make someone responsible. To act and be responsible is to take risks, he says, so that responsibility can be a matter of luck rather than fault or merit. US distribution is by ISBS. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

autonomy principally in tenns of the agent's conscious choice of ends or conduct. From this, the cognitivist emphasis on mental states and their contents naturally follows. The presence of specified mental states, as signifying agent choice, thus becomes the hallmark of responsible conduct. Capacities model theorists, by contrast, interpret personal autonomy and agent responsibility in tenns of the looser notion of 'control'. From this perspective, conscious choosing is but one (highly responsible) instance of such control, and the presence or absence of mental states is primarily relevant to detennining degrees of responsibility. The examination of these two models occupies the bulk of this manuscript. Exploration of the capacities model and criticism of the orthodox view also generate treatment of legal issues such as the use of negligence liability, the nature of criminal omissions, the character of various legal defenses, and so on. Chapters 2 and 3 set out some of the thematic arguments outlined above and introduce tenninology and useful distinctions. Chapters 4 through 7 provide substantive analyses of agent responsibility and of standards of criminal liability. In these chapters, I argue for the comparative superiority of the capacities model of responsibility and offer recommendations for changes in current legal conceptions and standards of liability. Each chapter centers on an element of individual responsibility and related legal concerns. The final chapter, Chapter 8, comprises an overview of the integrated theory of responsibility and liability and its comparison with the traditional view.