Lindsay Farmer, Making the Modern Criminal Law: Criminalization and Civil Order
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Author | |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2017.0449 |
| Pages | 464-465 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
Criminal law scholars are increasingly interested in criminalisation: that is, in the scope and limits of the criminal law. So far, their approach to this topic has been primarily normative: what
In
The substantive project is pursued mainly in the book's second and third parts. Each chapter in these parts examines a single area of the criminal law, explaining its development and how this reflected the law's aims at different times. (An exception is the long third chapter, which provides a more general and schematic history of English criminal law and scholarship). The areas examined are jurisdiction, codification, and responsibility (in part two of the book), and property offences, sexual offences, and offences against the person (in part three). In each case, Farmer's history of the area is intrinsically interesting, but it is also interesting for what it contributes to his theoretical and methodological projects.
Take the example of offences against the person. For the normative scholars, these offences lie at the heart of the criminal law: what is the criminal law for (they might ask rhetorically), if not for protecting our rights to bodily integrity and personal autonomy? But, says Farmer, these offences – and the rights underlying them – are a relatively recent invention. They emerge only in...
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