Bringing together previously disparate discussions on criminal responsibility from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of mental incapacity defences, tracing their development through historical cases to the modern era.

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.oup.com/uk as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understandings of mental illness and incapacity. With its focus on the complex interaction of legal doctrines and practices relating to mental incapacity and knowledge - both expert and non-expert - of it, this book offers a fresh perspective on this topic. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on mental incapacity from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of this terrain of criminal law, analysing the development of mental incapacity doctrines through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries around abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that the mental incapacity terrain has a distinct character - 'manifest madness'.

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.

Smith, Hogan, & Ormerod's Text, Cases, & Materials on Criminal Law is a thorough and accessible guide to criminal law, combining extracts from key cases and statutes, together with invaluable extracts from expert reports and articles. Ormerod and Laird expertly guide the reader through the various facets of the law while posing numerous questions for further investigation and reflection. The contents of the twelfth edition have been substantially revised and restructured to closely match the structure of contemporary courses. This new edition includes significantly more explanatory text and third-party critical commentary, ensuring that the book is suitable for use as a core textbook. This book provides the law student with everything they need to develop a thorough understanding of this fascinating subject. Online Resource Centre www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/orc/sho/ This book is accompanied by a selection of online resources, including detailed annual updates, useful web links, and outline answer guidance to selected in-text questions.

In the late 20th century, the law of sexual offenses began to reflect a striking divergence. On the one hand, it became significantly more punitive in its approach to nonconsensual sexual conduct, as in the case of rape and sexual assault. On the other hand, it became more permissive in how it dealt with putatively consensual sex, such as sodomy, adultery, and adult pornography. This book explores the conceptual and normative implications of this divergence. In doing so, it assumes that the proper role of criminal law in a liberal state is to protect individuals in their right not to be subjected to sexual contact against their will, while also safeguarding their right to engage in (private, consensual) sexual conduct in which they do wish to participate. Although consistent in the abstract, these dual aims frequently come into conflict in practice, as is explored in the context of a wide range of offenses.

'Criminal Law' is written with the needs of the student foremost in mind to provide, more than ever, as modern and as comprehensive an exposition of the criminal law as he or she could possibly require.