Read more
List of contents
Preface -- Credits -- Introduction -- The Principles of Criminal Liability -- The Elements of a Crime -- Hyam v. Director of Public Prosecutions -- The Mental Element in Crime -- Reconsidering the Relationship Among Voluntary Acts, Strict Liability, and Negligence in Criminal Law -- The Conspiracy Doctrine: A Critique -- Crime and Moral Luck -- Defenses -- State v. Leidholm -- The Battered Woman's Defense -- The Defense of Necessity -- Acting Under Duress -- Legal Conceptions of Mental Illness -- Premenstrual Syndrome: A New Criminal Defense? -- Criminal Procedure -- The Exclusionary Rule -- Mapp v. Ohio -- Why Suppress Valid Evidence? -- The Struggle to Make the Fourth Amendment More Than an Empty Blessing -- Entrapment -- U.S. v. Ordner -- Entrapment and the Creation of Crime -- Plea Bargaining -- North Carolina v. Alford -- Criminal Justice and the Negotiated Plea -- In Defense of "Bargain Justice"
Summary
When philosophers have turned their attention to criminal law, they have tended to emphasize problems about the criminalization of acts and the justification for the punishment of those who commit such acts. But there has been a recent wave of significant and exciting philosophical work on issues surrounding two other topics in criminal law: Given the performance of a criminal act, what establishes criminal? And what should the state be allowed to use in trying to establish liability? In this carefully edited volume, Michael J. Gorr and Sterling Harwood present a generous selection of papers representing the best of this new work. Avoiding overly abstract pieces in favor of essays that highlight both the philosophical questions and what actually happens on the street and in the courtroom, they have produced a book that is accessible and relevant to the concerns of students. Controversies in Criminal law is an innovative and useful contribution to the teaching of philosophy of law and the foundations of criminal justice. It will be widely used in philosophy departments, law schools, and schools of criminal justice.
