Fundamentals of Criminal Law Responsibility, Culpability, and Wrongdoing

Written by a noted expert in criminal law, the book explores the philosophical underpinnings of the law's major doctrines concerning actus reus, mens rea, and defences, showing that they are not always driven by culpability. They are grounded also in principles of moral responsibility, ascriptive responsibility, and wrongdoing. As such, they engage wider debates about wrongdoing, and about the boundaries between liability and freedom. This multi-textured analysis allows the book to take more nuanced positions about many important controversies in criminal law. It argues, for example, that liability for omissions and for negligence-and even some strict liability elements-can sometimes be legitimate yet, at the same time, should be relatively rare. It also explains why principles of causation can differ in the criminal law from other contexts; what is wrong with the 'voluntary act' requirement; and why luck can affect the wrongs we commit without changing our degree of blameworthiness for committing them. The book concludes with an account of the major types of defences, and of how they interact with an agent's wrong and her underlying motivations. This volume presents a coherent and rich vision of the criminal law that, by its sheer breadth, makes a distinctive contribution to the literature, of interest to lawyers and philosophers alike.

After graduating from Auckland and Oxford, Andrew Simester started his academic career at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He moved to the National University of Singapore in 2006 and, since 2015, concurrently holds the Edmund-Davies Chair in Criminal Law at King's College London. Professor Simester received an Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University in 2019, awarded in recognition of his writings in criminal law and theory. He has published widely in these areas, and is also a lead author of two major treatises, Simester and Sullivan's Criminal Law in the UK and Principles of Criminal Law in New Zealand.