Overview
- Offers a brand new criticism of well-known and central principles of criminalization
- Delivers the first modern (since the days of Bentham and Mill) defense of a utilitarian principle of criminalization
- Advances our thoughts and reasons for action about a very important question that concerns us all, namely by which moral principle(s) should the state’s criminalization decisions be guided?
Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library (LAPS, volume 134)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
The book shows that one of the reasons why we should reject or revise standard principles of criminalization is that even the most plausible versions of the harm principle and legal paternalism that have been offered so far are rendered redundant by general moral theories. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the other three principles (or versions thereof), the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization, can either be covered by the harm principle, thus making these principles also redundant, or be seen to have what look like other unacceptable implications (e.g. that versions of legal moralism are based on speculative and incorrect empirical assumptions or violate what is called the criminological levelling-down challenge). As such, there is reason to move beyond traditional principles of criminalization, and instead to investigate alternative principles the state should be guided by when attempting to justify which kinds of conduct should be criminalized. Moreover, this book presents and defends such a principle – the utilitarian principle of criminalization.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Why Criminalize?
Book Subtitle: New Perspectives on Normative Principles of Criminalization
Authors: Thomas Søbirk Petersen
Series Title: Law and Philosophy Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34690-4
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Law and Criminology, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-34689-8Published: 11 December 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-34692-8Published: 11 December 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-34690-4Published: 28 November 2019
Series ISSN: 1572-4395
Series E-ISSN: 2215-0315
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 149
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History, International Criminal Law , Philosophy of Law