This volume presents a leading contribution to the substantive arena relating to homicide in the criminal law. In broad terms, the ambit of homicide standardisations in extant law is contestable and opaque. This book provides a logical template to focus the debate. The overall concept addresses three specific elements within this arena, embracing an overarching synergy between them. This edifice engages in an examination of UK provisions, and in contrasting these provisions against alternative domestic jurisdictions as well as comparative contributions addressing a particularised research grid for content. The comparative chapters provide a wider background of how other legal systems treat a variety of specialised issues relating to homicide in the context of the criminal law. The debate in relation to homicide continues apace for academics, practitioners and within the criminal justice system. Having expert descriptions of the wider issues surrounding the particular discussion and of other legal systems’ approaches serves to stimulate and inform that debate. This collection will be a major source of reference for future discussion.

The book Criminal Law: Homicide deals specifically on homicide as a subject in criminal law. With the book, I carefully carved homicide law out of criminal law by focusing on court cases dealing with homicide and by asking thought-provoking questions that provide better understanding and knowledge of the crime of homicide as a branch of criminal law.

The criminal legal system defines and authoritatively enacts the boundaries of permissible and impermissible behaviour, with a focus on that which is prohibited or transgressive. Wickedness and Crime: Laws of Homicide and Malice seeks to expose the ways in which criminal law communicates and sanctions particular models of wickedness. This book illuminates the intimate relationship of crime and definitions of wrongdoing. A central contention of the book is that if a criminal legal system empty of normative content is undesirable and implausible, then we must think critically about the types of models of wickedness that are communicated by criminal legal doctrine. Through historical and contemporary analysis of the legal concept of malice, Penny Crofts examines the types of models of wickedness that are established through criminal legal doctrine. The book draws upon literature, philosophy and jurisprudence to place wickedness at the centre of an account of criminal law. Arguing that the current dominant idea of wickedness communicated in criminal law lacks nuance and clarity, this book examines the implications in terms of the legal subject, social responsibility and the jurisdiction of the legal system. Through historical accounts of malice the book provides resources to enrich a contemporary jurisprudence of blaming. A fascinating contribution to the study of law, this book will interest criminal legal scholars who seek a deeper understanding of the complexity of the relationship between law and morality. The book also provides a resource for legal theorists and philosophers of wickedness, supplying a sustained example and analysis of the implications of types of models of culpability.

The felony murder doctrine is one of the most widely criticized features of American criminal law. Legal scholars almost unanimously condemn it as irrational, concluding that it imposes punishment without fault and presumes guilt without proof. Despite this, the law persists in almost every U.S. jurisdiction. Felony Murder is the first book on this controversial legal doctrine. It shows that felony murder liability rests on a simple and powerful idea: that the guilt incurred in attacking or endangering others depends on one's reasons for doing so. Inflicting harm is wrong, and doing so for a bad motive—such as robbery, rape, or arson—aggravates that wrong. In presenting this idea, Guyora Binder criticizes prevailing academic theories of criminal intent for trying to purge criminal law of moral judgment. Ultimately, Binder shows that felony murder law has been and should remain limited by its justifying aims.

Why do killers deserve punishment? How should the law decide? These are the questions Samuel H. Pillsbury seeks to answer in this important new book on the theory and practice of criminal responsibility. In an argument both traditional and fresh, Pillsbury holds that persons deserve punishment according to the evil they choose to do, regardless of their psychological capacities. Using real case examples, he offers concrete proposals for legal reform, urging that modern preoccupations with subjective aspects of wrongdoing be replaced with rules that focus more on the individual's motives.

Since the publication of the first edition, this textbook has offered one of the most distinctive and innovative approaches to the study of criminal law. Looking at both traditional and emerging areas, such as public order offences and corporate manslaughter, it offers a broad and thorough perspective on the subject. Material is organised thematically and is clearly signposted at the beginning of each section to allow the student to navigate successfully through the different fields. This fourth edition looks at topical issues such as policing, the Serious Crime Act 2007, and reform of the Fraud Act 2006. Relevant case law and extracts from the most topical and engaging debates on the subject give the subject immediacy. The book is essential for both undergraduate and postgraduate study of criminal law and justice.

In A Question of Intent: Homicide Law and Criminal Justice in Qing and Republican China, Jennifer M. Neighbors uses legal cases from the local, provincial and central levels to explore both the complexity with which Qing law addressed abstract concepts and the process of adoption, adaptation, and resistance as late imperial law gave way to criminal law of the Republican period. This study reveals a Chinese justice system, both before and after 1911, that defies assignment to binary categories of modern and pre-modern law that have influenced much of past scholarship.