Matthew Dyson and Benjamin Vogel (eds), The Limits of Criminal Law: Anglo-German Concepts and Principles

DOI10.3366/elr.2020.0664
Published date01 September 2020
Date01 September 2020
Pages448-450
Author

This volume is the fruit of a collaboration between two groups of scholars: one English and one German. It is an interesting and original contribution to comparative criminal law scholarship, in two respects. First, its focus is unusual. The object of comparison is not particular areas of criminal law doctrine, but rather the limits of criminal law. In some parts of the book, this means the boundaries between criminal law and related areas, such as tort, intelligence, and administrative sanctions. In others, it means criminal law's normative limits, both substantive and procedural, and contexts in which these have been tested. These include terrorism, regulation, medical law, and “alternative enforcement” (referring here both to alternative sanctioning procedures within the criminal process and to quasi-punitive but formally non-criminal measures).

Second, the book's approach is also unusual. Each part consists of three chapters: one each giving the English and German perspectives on the topic, followed by a comparative conclusion by the editors. The editors then close the book with a final comparative concluding chapter. The content of each trio of chapters was determined collaboratively, through scoping papers and discussion at workshops; this has lent a welcome coherence that the book might easily have lacked. The overall result is a book that delivers both rich descriptive detail on the two systems and...

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