Oblique intention: September 2015

Oblique intent

Why the name? Well criminal law afficionados will recognise the phrase 'oblique intent' as referring to a problem of mens rea:can a person who intends to do x (such as setting fire to a building to scare the occupants) also be said to have an intention to kill if one of the occupants dies? This is a problem that has consumed an inordinate amount of time in the appeal courts and in the legal journals, and can be taken to represent a certain kind of approach to legal theory. My approach is intended to be more oblique to this mainstream approach, and thus to raise different kinds of questions and issues. Hence the name.

Monday, 7 September 2015

On Making the Modern Criminal Law

The blog has been dormant for a long time, and this is because I have been working on a larger project - finishing a long book about the development of the modern criminal law. I am very pleased to say that the manuscript is now complete and with the publishers, and this means that I will now resume posting on a regular basis.

First a word about the book. It is called Making the Modern Criminal Law. Criminalization and Civil Order, and it will be be published by Oxford University Press in January 2016. (There are more details on the OUP website, and you can even pre-order the book). I will be writing more about the book over the coming months as well as covering the usual mixture of topical and historical stories.