Self, Others and the State Relations of Criminal Responsibility Law in Context Series

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law.

Introduction; Part I. Rethinking Criminal Responsibility: 1. Space and time in criminal responsibility; 2. The significance of criminal responsibility; Part II. Responsibility in Criminal Law: 3. Modernisation of form and process: criminal responsibility at the turn of the twentieth century; 4. The 'birth' of Australian criminal law: the role of criminal responsibility in the mid-century; 5. Peak responsibility?: Codifying criminal responsibility in the late twentieth century; Part III. Criminal Responsibility in Relation: 6. Self; 7. Others; 8. State; Conclusion.

Arlie Loughnan is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Law Theory at the University of Sydney, and Co-Director of the Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney. She is the author of Manifest Madness: Mental Incapacity in Criminal Law (2012).