| Description |
x, 231 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
The amount of criminal law -- Too much punishment, too many crimes -- How more crimes produce injustice -- The content of new offenses -- An illustration of overcriminalization -- Internal constraints on criminalization -- The general part of criminal law -- From punishment to criminalization -- A right not to be punished? -- Malum prohibitum -- External constraints on criminalization -- Infringing the right not to be punished -- The devil in the details -- Crimes of risk-creation -- Alternative theories of criminalization -- Law and economics -- Utilitarianism -- Legal moralism |
| Summary |
"In Overcriminalization, Husak describes the phenomenon of rising punishment in detail, and explores its relation to the growth in criminal law. Most importantly, he shows why these trends produce massive injustice. His primary goal is to defend a set of constraints that limit the authority of states to enact and enforce penal offenses. This topic is extremely important in the real world, but has been neglected by most Anglo-American legal philosophers. His secondary goal is to situate this endeavor in criminal theory as traditionally construed. He argues that many of the resources to reduce the size and scope of the criminal law can be derived from within the criminal law itself - even though these resources have not been used explicitly for this purpose. Additional constraints emerge from a political view about the conditions under which important rights - such as the rights implicated by punishment - may be infringed |
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When conjoined, these constraints produce what Husak calls a minimalist theory of criminal liability. He applies these constraints to a handful of examples - most notably, to the justifiability of drug proscriptions - and concludes that this theory is vastly superior to any of the competitors that have been defended in the long history of criminal law scholarship. This important new book will be of great interest to philosophers of law, legal scholars, and political theorists."--BOOK JACKET |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-224) and index |
| Subject |
Criminal law -- United States -- Philosophy.
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| LC no. |
2007009297 |
| ISBN |
9780195328714 cloth alkaline paper |
|
019532871X cloth alkaline paper |
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