A Reader on Criminal Justice (Oxford Readings in Socio-Legal Studies)

Criminal justice is often described as a `system': an integrated set of processes all forming part of one over-arching, coherent social practice. For others, criminal justice is best seen as a diverse array of agencies and practices, all operating with their own discrete values and goals. In this important and much-needed collection, Nicola Lacey selects thirteen key texts reflecting the rich complexity of criminal justice.

Lacey, Nicola

Reference

Oxford University Press

A Life of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream

H.L.A. Hart was the pre-eminent legal philosopher of the twentieth century. As a scholar he single-handedly reinvented the philosophy of law and revolutionized our understanding of law as a social institution. Hart's approach to legal philosophy was at once disarmingly simple and breathtakingly ambitious, combining the insights of the Utilitarian tradition and the new linguistic philosophy of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He sought to elucidate a concept of law that would be of relevance to all forms of law, wherever or whenever they arose. This book is both an intellectual and a psychological biography, following his life from modest origins as the son of Jewish tailor parents in Yorkshire to worldwide fame as the most influential English-speaking legal theorist of the post-War era. It traces his successive metamorphoses; from Yorkshire schoolboy to Oxford scholar, successful barrister, intelligence officer, philosopher, and, finally, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford. Nicola Lacey draws upon Hart's previously unpublished diaries and letters to reveal a complex interior life. Outwardly successful, Hart was in fact tormented by doubts about his intellectual abilities, his sexual identity and his capacity to form close relationships. Her biography also sheds fascinating light on the origins of his ideas, and assesses his overall contribution to the philosophy of law. Above all, it is a chronicle of a life which made an impact far greater than many of us realize.

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

In Search of Criminal Responsibility: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions (Oxford Monographs on Criminal Law and Justice)

What makes someone responsible for a crime and therefore liable tof punishment under the criminal law? Modern lawyers will quickly and easily point to the criminal law's requirement of concurrent actus reus and mens rea, doctrines of the criminal law which ensure that someone will only be found criminally responsible if they have committed criminal conduct while possessing capacities of understanding, awareness, and self-control at the time of offense. Any notion of criminal responsibility based on the character of the offender, meaning an implication of criminality based on reputation or the assumed disposition of the person, would seem to today's criminal lawyer a relic of the 18th Century. In this volume, Nicola Lacey demonstrates that the practice of character-based patterns of attribution was not laid to rest in 18th Century criminal law, but is alive and well in contemporary English criminal responsibility-attribution. Building upon the analysis of criminal responsibility in her previous book, Women, Crime, and Character, Lacey investigates the changing nature of criminal responsibility in English law from the mid-18th Century to the early 21st Century. Through a combined philosophical, historical, and socio-legal approach, this volume evidences how the theory behind criminal responsibility has shifted over time. The character and outcome responsibility which dominated criminal law in the 18th Century diminished in ideological importance in the following two centuries, when the idea of responsibility as founded in capacity was gradually established as the core of criminal law. Lacey traces the historical trajectory of responsibility into the 21st Century, arguing that ideas of character responsibility and the discourse of responsibility as founded in risk are enjoying a renaissance in the modern criminal law. These ideas of criminal responsibility are explored through an examination of the institutions through which they are produced, interpreted and executed; the interests which have shaped both doctrines and institutions; and the substantive social functions which criminal law and punishment have been expected to perform at different points in history.

History

Europe

This student text was previously published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Using a number of critical approaches, including a feminist perspective, the authors analyze central aspects of criminal law in the context of the assumptions surrounding it. After developing a theoretical framework in the first chapter, the following chapters examine public order, intoxication, violence, the construction of bodily autonomy, and property.

Reconstructing Criminal Law: Text and Materials (Law in Context)

Criminal Law

Northwestern University Press

Reconstructing Criminal Law provides a radical and stimulating alternative to the standard black letter criminal law text. The authors analyse central aspects of criminal law in the context of the assumptions surrounding it, and employ a number of critical approaches, including a feminist perspective to give insights into the current state of the law. A comprehensive resource - it contains extracts that cover a wide range of materials from historical, political, sociological and philosophical sources and discusses offences considered to be at the margins of criminal law. It also offers an important practical element whereby students and teachers can attempt to answer the questions that the criminal justice system confronts on a daily basis.

Reconstructing Criminal Law: Text and Materials

This book provides an accessible introduction to Jurisprudence and Legal Theory. It sets out a course of study that offers a highly effective series of introductions into a wide variety of theories and theoretical perspectives, from traditional approaches such as Natural Law to modern ones such as Feminist Theory, Economic Analysis of Law and Foucault and Law.

Introduction to Jurisprudence and Legal Theory: Commentary and Materials

Jackson, Emily

Collins, Hugh

Reiner, Robert

Barron, Anne

Ross, Hamish

Teubner, Gunther

Legal Theory & Systems

Reconstructing Criminal Law provides a radical and stimulating alternative to the standard black letter criminal law text. The authors analyse central aspects of criminal law in the context of the assumptions surrounding it, and employ a number of critical approaches, including a feminist perspective to give insights into the current state of the law. A comprehe nsive resource--it contains extracts that cover a wide range of materials from historical, political, sociological and philosophical sources and discusses offences considered to be at the margins of criminal law. It also offers an important practical element whereby students and teachers can attempt to answer the questions that the criminal justice system confronts on a daily basis.

Politics & Social Sciences

Wells, Celia

Quick, Oliver

Social Sciences

Butterworths

Lacey criticizes the fundamental liberal philosophical assumptions underlying much of the modern tradition of theorising about punishment and argues instead for its justifying social functions. This book should be of interest to students of political and moral philosophy, penology, criminal law, criminology, legal theory, theories of justice.

State Punishment: Political Principles and Community Values (International Library of Philosophy)

Philosophy

Routledge

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