The Preventive Turn In Criminal Law

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This book presents a theoretical examination of the rise and expansion of preventive criminal offences that has gained momentum in Anglo-American criminal justice since the late-twentieth century. It shows how recent transformations in criminal law and justice are intrinsically related to and embedded in the way liberal society and liberal law have been imagined, developed and conditioned by their social, political and historical contexts. The book starts by identifying a tension, within contemporary criminal law, between the importance given to the expression of individual autonomy and responsibility, and the perceived need for prevention as a condition for the security of autonomy and the promotion of welfare. The book then traces this tension back to an intrinsic ambivalence within the modern conception of individual liberty, which is both repressed and preserved by liberal conceptions of responsibility and punishment. It finds that it is this tension that ultimately grounds the rise of preventive criminal offences in recent times.

The Preventive Turn in Criminal Law engages with the main contemporary literature on criminal law, prevention, risk, security and criminalisation, by deploying a theoretical perspective from both classical and contemporary works of social and political theory, including the works of Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, and Bentham. It does so in order to reveal that the pervasiveness of prevention in twenty-first century criminal law not only represents the consequence of new and unprecedented features of contemporary politics and society, but also embeds long-established features of the liberal legal and political tradition.

Translating Guilt: Identifying Leadership Liability For Mass Atrocity Crimes (international Criminal Justice Series)

Download Translating Guilt: Identifying Leadership Liability For Mass Atrocity Crimes (international Criminal Justice Series)

This book seeks to understand how and why we should hold leaders responsible for the collective mass atrocities that are committed in times of conflict. It attempts to untangle the debates on modes of liability in international criminal law (ICL) that have become truly complex over the last twenty years, and to provide a way to identify the most appropriate model for leadership liability. A unique comparative theory of ICL is offered, which clarifies the way in which ICL develops as a patchwork of different domestic criminal law notions. This theory forms the basis for the comparison of some influential domestic criminal law systems, with a view to understanding the policy and cultural reasons for their differences. There is a particular focus on the background of the German law which has influenced the International Criminal Court so much recently. This helps to understand, and seek a solution to, the current impasses in the debates on which model of liability should be applied. An entire chapter of the book is devoted to considering why leaders should be held responsible for crimes committed by their subordinates, from legal, moral and pragmatic perspectives. The moral responsibility of leaders is translated into criminal liability, and the different domestic models of liability are translated to the international context, in such a way as to appeal to advanced students of ICL, academics, and practitioners who want to understand the complexities of leadership liability in international criminal law today and identify the best way to approach it. Cassandra Steer is Executive Director of Women in International Security Canada, and Junior Wainwright Fellow at McGill University, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.