The Grammar Of Criminal Law Foundations

The Grammar of Criminal Law will be a three-volume work that addresses the field of international and comparative law, focusing on issues of international concern, ranging from genocide to domestic efforts to combat terrorism, torture, and other international crimes.--Publisher.

"Featuring 48 tightly edited essays by leading legal scholars, philosophers, and social scientists, Foundations of Criminal Law is a comprehensive examination of the foundational elements of liability. The selections range in approach from classical to contemporary and cover such topics as theories of punishment, mental states, causation, justification and excuse and sentencing. A general introduction precedes each section, and each essay is followed by notes and questions designed to encourage readers to think analytically about the issues it raises. Unique in the depth and sophistication of its coverage, this collection makes an excellent text for courses in criminal law, legal philosophy, and jurisprudence"--Unedited summary from book cover.

'The Grammar of Criminal Law' addresses the field of international and comparative criminal law, with its primary focus on the issues of international concern, ranging from genocide, to domestic efforts to combat terrorism, to torture, and to other international crimes. Volume one is devoted to foundational issues.

To understand the international legal order in the field of criminal law, we need to ask three elementary questions. What is international law? What is criminal law? And what happens to these two fields when they are joined together? Volume Two of The Grammar of Criminal Law sets out to answer these questions through a series of twelve dichotomies - such as law vs. justice, intention vs. negligence, and causation vs. background events - that invite the reader to better understand the jurisprudential foundations of international criminal law. The book will appeal to anyone interested in the future of international cooperation in a time of national retrenchment, and will be of interest to students, scholars, and policymakers around the world.

Twenty-five leading contemporary theorists of criminal law tackle a range of foundational issues about the proper aims and structure of the criminal law in a liberal democracy. The challenges facing criminal law are many. There are crises of over-criminalization and over-imprisonment; penal policy has become so politicized that it is difficult to find any clear consensus on what aims the criminal law can properly serve; governments seeking to protect their citizens in the face of a range of perceived threats have pushed the outer limits of criminal law and blurred its boundaries. To think clearly about the future of criminal law, and its role in a liberal society, foundational questions about its proper scope, structure, and operations must be re-examined. What kinds of conduct should be criminalized? What are the principles of criminal responsibility? How should offences and defences be defined? The criminal process and the criminal trial need to be studied closely, and the purposes and modes of punishment should be scrutinized. Such a re-examination must draw on the resources of various disciplines-notably law, political and moral philosophy, criminology and history; it must examine both the inner logic of criminal law and its place in a larger legal and political structure; it must attend to the growing field of international criminal law, it must consider how the criminal law can respond to the challenges of a changing world. Topics covered in this volume include the question of criminalization and the proper scope of the criminal law; the grounds of criminal responsibility; the ways in which offences and defences should be defined; the criminal process and its values; criminal punishment; the relationship between international criminal law and domestic criminal law. Together, the essays provide a picture of the exciting state of criminal law theory today, and the basis for further research and debate in the coming years.

The Grammar of Criminal Law will be a three-volume work that addresses the field of international and comparative law, focusing on issues of international concern, ranging from genocide to domestic efforts to combat terrorism, torture, and other international crimes.--Publisher.

The Grammar of Criminal Law is a 3-volume work that addresses the field of international and comparative criminal law, with its primary focus on the issues of international concern, ranging from genocide, to domestic efforts to combat terrorism, to torture, and to other international crimes. The first volume is devoted to foundational issues. The Grammar of Criminal Law is unique in its systematic emphasis on the relationship between language and legal theory; there is no comparable comparative study of legal language. Written in the spirit of Fletcher's classic Rethinking Criminal Law, this work is essential reading in the field of international and comparative law.