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Maguire, Morgan & Reiner: The Oxford Handbook of Criminology 4e

Chapter 08

Readers interested in the debate about 'critical criminal law' should consult the important early papers by Mark Kelman, 'Interpretive Construction in the Substantive Criminal Law', Stanford Law Review 33(4): 591–673 (1981) and David Nelken, 'Critical Criminal Law', Journal of Law and Society, 14(1): 105–17 (1987). Alan Norrie's Crime, Reason and History, 2nd edn, London: Butterworths, 2001, provides an extended application of critical method to criminal law, and pushes the critical approach forward by exploring the historical context in which criminal law doctrine has developed (see in particular ch. 1) and the relationship between criminal law doctrine and sentencing practice (see ch. 10). An assessment of the relationship between developments in political culture, criminal justice institutions, and criminal law doctrine is attempted in Nicola Lacey's 'In Search of the Responsible Subject', Modern Law Review, 64(3): 350–71 (2001) and 'Responsibility and Modernity in Criminal Law,' Journal of Political Philosophy 9(3): 249–77 (2001).

The relationship between questions of criminal law and those of criminal justice is explored in greater detail in Nicola Lacey, Celia Wells, and Oliver Quick (2003), Reconstructing Criminal Law, 3rd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ch. 1; Simon Bronitt and Bernadette McSherry (2005), Principles of Criminal Law, 2nd edn, Pyrmont, N.S.W.: Law Book Company; Nicola Lacey, 'Criminalisation as Regulation', in C. Parker, C. Scott, N. Lacey, and J. Braithwaite (eds) (2004), Regulating Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 144–67; and Donald Nicolson and Lois Bibbings (eds) (2000), Feminist Perspectives on Criminal Law, London: Cavendish. Lindsay Farmer's Criminal Law, Tradition and Legal Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, provides another useful exposition of critical method in the criminal law field, and a fascinating case study of the interaction between national politics, criminal law and criminal procedure in nineteenth-century Scotland: see in particular chs 1 and 3.