Through one coherent retributivist vision of the criminal law, this book explores under examined problems within criminal law theory.

This book presents a comprehensive theory of a culpability-based criminal law.

In 2009, Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan published Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law. The book set out a theory that those who deserve punishment should receive punishment commensurate with, but no greater than, that which they deserve. Reflections on Crime and Culpability: Problems and Puzzles expands on their innovative ideas on the application of punishment in criminal law. Theorists working in criminal law theory presuppose or ignore puzzles that lurk beneath the surface. Now those who wish to examine these topics will have one monograph that combines the disparate puzzles in criminal law through a unified approach to culpability. Along with some suggestions as to how they might resolve the puzzles, Alexander and Ferzan lay out the arguments and analysis so future scholars can engage with questions about our understanding of culpability that very few have addressed.

A doctrinal and theoretical analysis of culpability for unjustified risk-taking in Anglo-American criminal law.

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law.

In Justice in Extreme Cases, Darryl Robinson argues that the encounter between criminal law theory and international criminal law (ICL) can be illuminating in two directions: criminal law theory can challenge and improve ICL, and conversely, ICL's novel puzzles can challenge and improve mainstream criminal law theory. Robinson recommends a 'coherentist' method for discussions of principles, justice and justification. Coherentism recognizes that prevailing understandings are fallible, contingent human constructs. This book will be a valuable resource to scholars and jurists in ICL, as well as scholars of criminal law theory and legal philosophy.

This is the first book of a series on criminalization - examining the principles and goals that should guide what kinds of conduct are to be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. The first volume studies the scope and boundaries of the criminal law - asking what principled limits might be placed on criminalizing behaviour.

This volume collects 17 of Douglas Husak's influential essays in criminal law theory. The essays span Husak's original and provocative contributions to the major topics in the field, including the grounds of criminal liability, the significance of culpability, the role of defences, and the justification of punishment. The volume includes an extended introduction by the author, drawing together the themes of his work and exploring the goals of criminal theory. Together, the essays present a desert-based analysis of issues in criminal theory that rejects the consequentialist approach more familiar among legal scholars. The foremost concern of these essays is to ensure that the principles and doctrines of the criminal law preserve justice and do not sacrifice individuals for the common welfare. Engagingly written, the essays are accessible to non-specialists and represent an excellent introduction to current issues and debates in the theory of criminal law.

A comparative and collaborative study of the foundational principles and concepts that underpin different domestic systems of criminal law.

The willful ignorance doctrine says defendants should sometimes be treated as if they know what they don't. This book provides a careful defense of this method of imputing mental states. Though the doctrine is only partly justified and requires reform, it also demonstrates that the criminal law needs more legal fictions of this kind. The resulting theory of when and why the criminal law can pretend we know what we don't has far-reaching implications for legal practice and reveals a pressing need for change.