[...]... amounts to in the context of the criminal law, but will not have space to defend it in detail.38 Two further limits on the scope of this book should be noted here: both concern the scope of the criminal law The first is that I will focus on the law in the books’, whilst recognising the truth in the by now clichéd distinction between the law in the books’ and the law in action’: between the law as... 13:10:11 2007 A Normative Theory of Criminal Law? in the way of investigation and preparation; policing; and issues concerning criminalisation.32 This book is, however, focused on the substantive criminal law: although it will say something about criminalisation and about aspects of the criminal trial, it will say almost nothing about criminal punishment, or about policing and the criminal process As far... another distinction that seems both important and uncertain: that between the general part of the criminal law and whatever underlying moral or political values may be relevant to the normative appraisal of the criminal law Consider for instance the supposed principle that criminal liability requires an act.18 That principle could be an explicit part of the criminal law, if it was included in the criminal. .. theory of what?’, there are two issues to note The first concerns the scope of criminal law Theories and textbooks of criminal law often implicitly take it to consist in the substantive criminal law (the general and the special parts):31 but any adequate ‘theory of criminal law would also need to deal with such matters as criminal punishment; the criminal process—including not just the trial, but... responsibility, in particular in deciding what efforts to make to enforce which laws, and where and on whom to focus their investigative and prosecutorial efforts.39 Such features of the law in action often do not change the law s content, since there is a real distinction between the content of the law and how that law with that content is applied and enforced: if, for instance, a police force reduces the resources... represented in statutes, codes, textbooks and treatises, and the law as applied and used by the police and other officials as they enforce the law and investigate and prosecute crimes Theorists must of course recognise the extent to which, in any practicable human system, the officials whose responsibility it is to enforce and administer the law will have a quite extensive discretion in discharging that responsibility, ... interlocutors must remain an open question When legal theorists ask what the criminal law ought to be, they must be asking about ‘our’ criminal law, but the temporal and cultural scope of that ‘our’ is open for exploration and extension We are asking, not what the criminal law ought to be at all times and in all contexts, but what the criminal law ought to be in a modern liberal democracy: what kind of account... Duff: Answering for PAGE: 5 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Fri Oct 19 13:10:11 2007 The ‘General Part’ and the ‘Special Part’ find it either in the existing criminal law, or in the existing political morality, of the society whose law it is, but argue that it ought to be a part of their political morality Natural Law theorists might also argue that, even if it is not in fact part of the law, it is a principle that the. .. might be a principle that helps us to make best sense of the decisions that courts make in interpreting and applying the law (and of the laws that they are interpreting and applying), and that we can therefore identify as implicit in the law Such an identification would be the outcome of a process of ‘rational reconstruction’—a process of analysis and interpretation that aims to make the best possible... render the criminal law rational and principled As far as the possibility of such a theory is concerned, if we think about the broad scope of the criminal law and the diverse types of conduct that it covers; if we think too about the implications of the by now familiar idea that we live in times of value pluralism and conflict, and that in our political (and thus also our legal) lives we face the competing . 10/9 JOBNAME: Duff: Answering for PAGE: 3 SESS: 3 OUTPUT: Fri Oct 19 13:10:11 2007 Answering for Crime Responsibility and Liability in the Criminal Law R A Duff Columns. xv INTRODUCTION 1 1. The ‘General Part’ and the ‘Special Part’ 1 2. A Normative Theory of Criminal Law? 6 3. Answering for Crime 15 1. RESPONSIBILITY AND