The Law Of Criminal Attempt

"The Most Important Treatise on Criminal Law Produced by American Legal Scholarship" First published to great acclaim in 1947, Hall's General Principles of Criminal Law is one of the undisputed classics in its field. It provides more than a broad overview. Drawing on his expertise in jurisprudence and the work of the legal realists, it analyzes the principles that comprise criminal activity with an emphasis on its creation and definition by officials. This process is explored in the chapters on criminology, criminal theory and penal theory and, in more specific terms, the chapters on legality, mens rea, harm, causation, punishment, strict liability, ignorance and mistake, necessity and coercion, mental disease, intoxication and criminal attempt. "For many years, our standard work on criminal law has been Bishop's. First published in 1856, Bishop's is the only American book in the field that has conspicuously influenced our criminal law. (...) When Jerome Hall's, General Principles of Criminal Law (1947) appeared, it represented the first significant effort to articulate the principles of criminal law since Bishop's era. Hall's work may, in fact, represent the most important treatise on criminal law produced by American legal scholarship." --Fred Cohen, Journal of Legal Education 16 (1963-64) 260.

Gideon Yaffe presents a ground-breaking work which demonstrates the importance of philosophy of action for the law. Many people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. So the law governing attempted crimes is of practical as well as theoretical importance. Questions arising in the adjudication of attempts intersect with questions in the philosophy of action, such as what intention a person must have, if any, and what a person must do, if anything, to be trying to act. Yaffe offers solutions to the difficult problems courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes. He argues that the problems courts face admit of principled solution through reflection either on what it is to try to do something; or on what evidence is required for someone to be shown to have tried to do something; or on what sentence for an attempt is fair given the close relation between attempts and completions. The book argues that to try to do something is to be committed by one's intention to each of the components of success and to be guided by those commitments. Recognizing the implications of this simple and plausible position helps us to identify principled grounds on which the courts ought to distinguish between defendants charged with attempted crimes.

Softbound - New, softbound print book.