Re‐thinking the Study of Criminal Law?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1992.tb02848.x |
| Published date | 01 September 1992 |
| Author | Mike Treip |
| Date | 01 September 1992 |
REVIEW ARTICLES
Re-thinking the Study
of
Criminal Law?
Mike
Treip*
Andrew Ashworrh,
Principles
of
Criminal Law,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1991,
xxii
+
434
pp, hb
E35.00,
pb f12.95.
Of all the subjects in the law curriculum, criminal law
is
often said to be the most open
to
interdisciplinary and critical approaches. Yet relatively few textbooks
or
courses exploit this
potential, and standard teaching of criminal law tends to restrict itself
to
a passing nod to
certain debates in liberal political theory before immersing itself in the complexities of legal
doctrine.’
All academic fields have their traditional divisions
in
ideology, style and subject
matter. Legal study
is
no exception. Indeed, the creation of such divisions is intrinsic
to the practice of labelling a ‘body of knowledge’ as unique and as belonging to
one discipline
or
another. Much has been made and said of the emergence of so-called
socio-legal studies and critical legal studies. These rather loose terms (which are
frequently used but rarely defined) refer to diverse attempts by legal scholars in
the last two or three decades to look beyond the traditional boundaries that have
enclosed legal study. Socio-legal scholars wish to place different areas of law into
their social contexts, to see the relationship of their fields to other disciplines and
to see how their subjects actually affect the realities of social existence. The critical
legal scholars are perhaps more distanced from their disciplines and are more
concerned with de-constructing them, analysing their constituent parts and deter-
mining the philosophical and ideological premises on which they are based. Not
surprisingly, these scholars frequently have drawn on critical political perspectives
such as Marxism and Feminism.
Obviously, the extent of the influence of these enterprises varies enormously
between different areas of legal study, different institutions and different individuals.
It
is surprising, however, that the subject of criminal law as
it
appears on most
law curricula and in most textbooks has, on the whole, remained immune to these
interdisciplinary forces. As Lacey
et
a1
say, most courses and books on the subject
revert quite quickly to ‘the complexities of legal doctrine.’ Despite the massive
increase in knowledge about crime and criminal behaviour this century (particularly
in
the
post-war period), the discipline of criminal law has continued to confine itself
to the discussion of legal rules and their interpretation by lawyers. The explosion
in
criminal justice studies, the diversification of criminological theories and
developments in the sociology of deviance have left intact the boundaries of criminal
law.
Ashworth’s
Principles
of
Criminal Law
(hereinafter PCL), along with Lacey, Wells
and Meure’s
Reconsrructing Criminal
Law,
provides a notable exception to this
tendency. The latter attempts to lay open the political and ideological forces behind
_____~
*Faculty
of
Law, University
of
East Anglia, Norwich.
(With thanks
to
Hilary Koe for her advice and comments.)
I
N. Lacey,
C.
Wells and
D.
Meure,
Rrcvri.srructing
Crirninul
L.urr*:
Tcrr
unrl
Murerials
(London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1990)
p
xi.
733
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