NCJ Number
99126
Editor(s)
J R Pennock
Date Published
1985
Length
378 pages
Annotation
Major topics addressed by this collection of papers presented to the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy are the moral and metaphysical sources of criminal law, retribution, criminal responsibility in government, and the economic theory of crime.
Abstract
The first paper in the section on criminal law sources identifies principles underlying substantive criminal law and then examines the concept that individuals are rational and autonomous agents. In contrast, the next author compares the concept of the person in Islamic Morocco, medieval Europe, and the United States. A third paper critically discusses the viewpoints of the first two papers in the context of modern philosophic trends. Papers in the next section focus on the issue of retribution, beginning with classification-based sentencing schemes as exemplified in the 1980 proposals of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. Other authors propose a scheme for determining the nature and severity of the sentence to be meted out and present a philosphical foundation based on criminal liability for sentencing recommendations derived from retributivist theory. One contributor to the section on criminal responsibility in government argues that a strong basis exists for imputing criminal liability to officials in organizations, including government agencies. A comment agrees that governments can be held criminally liable in appropriate cases, but finds the previous author's theory deficient because it fails to define a government entity. The third paper concludes that organizations should be subject to civil, but not criminal law. The last section begins with an analysis of the failure of the economic theory of crime to penetrate mainstream legal theory. Three subsequent papers criticize this viewpoint. Footnotes accompany each paper. A bibliography of approximately 350 references and an index are supplied.