Answering for Crime: Responsibility and Liability in the Criminal Law

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In this long-awaited book, Antony Duff offers a new perspective on the structures of criminal law and criminal liability. His starting point is a distinction between responsibility (understood as answerability) and liability, and a conception of responsibility as relational and practice-based. This focus on responsibility, as a matter of being answerable to those who have the standing to call one to account, throws new light on a range of questions in criminal law theory: on the question of criminalisation, which can now be cast as the question of what we should have to answer for, and to whom, under the threat of criminal conviction and punishment; on questions about the criminal trial, as a process through which defendants are called to answer, and about the conditions (bars to trial) given which a trial would be illegitimate; on questions about the structure of offences, the distinction between offences and defences, and the phenomena of strict liability and strict responsibility; and on questions about the structures of criminal defences. The net result is not a theory of criminal law; but it is an account of the structure of criminal law as an institution through which a liberal polity defines a realm of public wrongdoing, and calls those who perpetrate (or are accused of perpetrating) such wrongs to account.

Reviews

Duff's publication Answering for Crime is cause to celebrate because, while it includes some previously published material, it is a seamless exposition of a unified and original thesis...I cannot do justice to the richness and nuance of Answering for Crime...it brims with insights even apart from its central thesis...I have no doubt that this book will be regarded as a major contribution to criminal law theory. The book overflows with sophisticated collateral insights, and its central thesis will surely become a focus of scholarly attention for years to come. Peter Westen Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Vol 28, No 3, 2008 ...an important yet highly readable book...contains many new insights and which, equally importantly, tackles complex issues of criminal law theory with a rare clarity...this book proves that complex issues can be discussed at an elevated level without making them incomprehensible to all but a small group of dedicated theorists. Indeed, the book should be of interest not just to academics but also to students and even- unusually for a book in this field - practitioners and policy makers. Fiona Leverick Edinburgh Law Review Vol 13, 2009 Answering for Crime is an important contribution to criminal law theory. Academics interested in criminal law will find Duff's newest opus a rich resource and a rewarding target. One can, however, go further: Canadian criminal law practitioners will find it has much to say on issues of concern to them as counsel in particular cases and more generally as lawyers seeking to improve the administration of justice. Michael Plaxton Canadian Criminal Law Review Volume 13, Number 3, Sept 2009 ...the greatest contribution of this marvelous book lies in Antony Duff's elegant and arresting vision of criminal law's conceptual foundation...magnificent. Adil Ahmad Haque The Law and Politics Book Review Vol. 18 No.5 (May 2008)

Author Bio

Antony Duff is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. He is the author of numerous works on general philosophy, on the philosophy of law, and most particularly on the philosophy of crime and punishment.