Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence – and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets T. Abt. New York: Basic Books (2019) 290pp. $30.00hb ISBN 978‐1‐5416‐4572‐1
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12375 |
| Author | KATHARINA KRÜSSELMANN,MARIEKE LIEM |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
The Howard Journal Vol59 No 2. June 2020 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12372
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 233–240
Book Reviews
Criminal Law and the Man Problem N. Naffine. Oxford: Hart (2019) 304pp. £55.00hb ISBN
9781509918010
In her latest book, entitled Criminal Law and the Man Problem, Ngaire Naffine embarks on
an expansive interrogation of ‘the defects of reasoning of some of the most influential
men of criminal law,over generations’ and a critical exploration of how those defects (and
those men) have ‘enabled and sustained … an almost total monopoly of legal, political,
social and economic power’ with damaging effects on the ‘moral and intellectual integrity
of the discipline as a whole’ (p.186). Needless to say, this is an ambitious project, which
spans a broad historical, philosophical, and jurisdictional canvas. It makes a bold and
urgent intervention at a time when ‘grand-scale’ theorising – both within feminism and
critical criminology – has perhaps been less in vogue.
It is clearly beyond the scope of this short review to do justice to the range of issues
that Naffine tackles in her spirited and incisive challenge to the tenacity of patriarchal
logics within the contemporary criminal law landscape. In what follows, my aim is merely
to give a brief summary of the book’s core trajectory and conclusions, in the hopes that
it will push the critically curious to delve deeper. In her introduction, Naffine explains
that the book – building in important respects on her previous work in this field – sits
at the nexus of a challenging interaction: between the dual, but often overlooked and
naturalised, realities that ‘the most characteristic thing about crime is its overwhelming
maleness’, and that ‘maleness is also the overwhelming characteristic of the people who
have made the criminal legal world – its norms, priorities and characters’ (p.1).
Across the book, Naffine conducts a careful excavation around the exemption for
husbands against marital rape offences only relatively recently abandoned in most com-
mon law systems. This acts as a testing ground and microcosm of what Naffine argues are
broader patterns and injustices of criminal doctrine and its application, over time and
across jurisdictions. Having set the context of the marital rape exemption, Naffine de-
votes early chapters of the book to a detailed examination of the leading men of criminal
law, including Hale, Blackstone, Fitzjames Stephen, and Mill, who – she argues – have
been responsible for the making of this male habitat.
As someone trained in the Scottish legal context, where the work of long-dead (and
inevitably male) institutional writers retains authoritative status even today, this logic of
legacy is all too familiar to me; and so, too, are the reasons for its lamentation in respect of
progressive feminist politics. But Naffine’s turning of this lens upon the English common
law tradition yields novel insight. Ultimately, it allows her to introduce to the reader a
cast of three typologies of men implicit in this body of legal thought – which she labels the
sexual master, little monarch, and bounded individual. The sexual master is possessive
and dominant. He not only seizes sexual pleasure in satisfaction of his desires, but has
been given a legal entitlement to do so. Meanwhile, the little monarch represents the
male figure of family authority.He takes command of his domestic realm, absorbing into
himself the identities of all other members and taking authoritative decisions. Finally,the
bounded individual, held in high esteem in liberal accounts, is conceived as a being with
firm borders. He is clearly individualised, and he requires, and must respect, personal
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2020 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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