Crime, Reason and History: A Critical Introduction to Criminal Law

Law in Context

by Alan Norrie

Crime, Reason and History provides an alternative approach to the study of the general principles of criminal law. It emphasises, in contrast to orthodox texts, the tensions and contradictions at the law's heart. The author outlines the themes of responsibility, rationality and justice which govern the orthodox criminal law text. He traces these to the early nineteenth century reform of the criminal law and notes conflicts within reform ideologies relating to the idea of the 'responsible individual'. He then takes the reader through the bulk of the criminal law's 'general part' showing how conflicts from reform ideology emerge within criminal law. An historical and political logic underlies its illogicalities, giving it its 'shape'. The author presents a sceptical critique of the liberal positivist tradition in criminal law scholarship, and a social analysis of both its practical necessity and intellectual impossibility. He shows how the ideology of individual legal justice was imposed as a means of excluding alternative political voices, while recognising its importance for the survival of the liberal polity.

Genres: Nonfiction

289 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Michael]

Notes:

Ch. 1 - The aim of the book is to understand the contradiction of criminal law based in pure rationality and, at the same time, deeply rooted in historical context.

p. 17 - The outcome of criminal cases is a matter of chance, not only because individual judges have their own prerogatives, but also because historical and cultural circumstance are key to criminal law. To understand criminal law, we must understand the structures that have created it.

p. 20 - penal systems uphold political systems, first and foremost

p. 21 - idea of punishment proportionality from Cesare Beccaria

p. 22 - the idea of punishment as a loss of rights (some abstract) as opposed to a mere infliction of pain.

p. 24 - the law must exist and be clear to all before implementation through courts, etc.

p. 29 - reformers thought of law as abstracted from social class, but criminality has always been intimately tied with social class.

****p. 33 - the legal process also involves rationalizing in the pejorative sense "papering over the logical cracks in order to reach a result not justified on the rules."

Quoting Williams "A judgment will marshal the authorities in a manner suggesting, to the uninitiated, that the court is ineluctibly bound to reach the conclusion it does reach, when to the discerning eye it is often nor more than what is popularly called 'special pleading'

p. 35 - "Thus the historical roots of the conflict between a logic of individual fairness, a universal dispensation of rights and liberties, and a functional concern for social order carry through to our day."