Mar 23rd 2017, 18:20

“I HATE THIS BOOK!” – SO SAYS THE AUTHOR!
A GREAT DISCUSSION POINT FOR AN EXAMINATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WRONGDOING AND CRIMINALIZATION

An appreciation by Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor of Richmond Green Chambers

Another most important title from Oxford University Press has just been published in their “Criminilization Series” and written by Warwick Professor Victor Tadros. At least he is candid right at the start saying “I hate this book”, although we must add he says “I have failed to write it for a long time, and not for want of trying”. But here it is now.

The book can be assessed on several different levels within the criminology community. For both scholars and academics, we found the commentary on the scope of criminal law to be far more “readable” than the author admits because practitioners are realists (we must be) so we recognize that no one book can consider all the issues which are relevant to the scope of our criminal law. But it is a start, and a most welcome start for the academic lawyer.

The book’s synopsis describes OUP’s Criminalization series as emerging from “an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focusing on the principles that might guide decisions about what kinds of conduct should be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take.”

The author has developed what he calls “a normative theory of criminalization”, so the OUP series reviews the key questions at the heart of the issue which are set out in the following way.

What principles and goals should guide legislators in deciding what to criminalize?
How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? And finally, how should law enforcement officials apply the law's specifications of offences?

“Wrongs and Crimes” is the sixth volume to appear giving criminologists “a philosophical investigation of the relationship between moral wrongdoing and criminalization” which we consider a most important title for the law undergraduate’s reading list.

The contents of Tadros’s book covers a consideration of the justification of punishment; the nature of harm; the importance of autonomy; inchoate wrongdoing; the role of consent; and the role of the state.

What we found particularly helpful was the detail concerning “the nature of moral wrong doing, the sources of wrong doing, why wrong doing is the central target of the criminal law, and the ways in which criminalization of non-wrongful conduct might be permissible”.

Professor Tadros succeeds admirably with his mission to consider the nature and sources of wrongdoing which every law student must begin with both with “personal and interpersonal responses” which arise. He goes on to evaluate the response that the state should make which is so often under-stated or ignored when it comes to how to deal with such wrongdoing.

It is a great tribute to the author that he has been able to sift through the vast literature this subject generates to give us, as the readers a coherent seventeen chapters in such a lucid way thus making the book both “readable” and “lovable” … to us, in any event, and no doubt to a new generation of applied criminologists, and possibly budding jurisprudents.


The publication date is cited as at 15th December 2016.

...the book worth reading. * Arudra Burra, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, * Wrongs and Crimes is something rare in moral philosophy and rarer still in the moral philosophy of punishment: a book whose good sense keeps pace with its seemingly limitless cleverness. Threaded through the intricate embroidery of cases are simple, powerful, and humane ideas. * Niko Kolodny, Professor of Philosophy, UC Berkeley * Philosophical research on foundational issues concerning interpersonal consent is in fairly early days, and Tadros has elevated it to new levels of rigour. * Tom Dougherty, Criminal Law and Philosophy * Wrongs and Crimes is up to the extraordinarily high philosophical standards that Victor Tadros has set throughout his career. ... Engaging with Tadros's work has been an unbelievably effective means to sharpen, refine, and improve my own thought. I am confident it will prove equally beneficial for any philosopher of criminal law. * Douglas Husak, Criminal Law and Philosophy * Professor Tadros succeeds admirably with his mission to consider the nature and sources of wrongdoing which every law student must begin with both with "personal and interpersonal responses" which arise... It is a great tribute to the author that he has been able to sift through the vast literature this subject generates to give us, as the readers a coherent seventeen chapters in such a lucid way thus making the book both "readable" and "lovable"...to us, in any
event, and no doubt to a new generation of applied criminologists, and possibly budding jurisprudents. * Phillip Taylor MBE and Elizabeth Taylor, Richmond Green Chambers *