The Palgrave Handbook of Applied Ethics and the Criminal Law, 1st ed. 2019

This handbook consists of essays on contemporary issues in criminal law and their theoretical underpinnings. Some of the essays deal with the relationship between morality and criminalization. Others deal with criminalization in the context of specific crimes such as fraud, blackmail, and revenge pornography. The contributors also address questions of responsible agency such as the effects of addiction or insanity, and some deal with punishment, its mode and severity, and the justness of the state?s imposition of it. These chapters are authored by some of the most distinguished scholars in the fields of applied ethics, criminal law, and jurisprudence.

1. Introduction

2. Addiction and Responsibility

3. Affirmative Consent

4. Crimes Against Animals

5. When Does Evidence Support Guilt “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt”?

6. Blackmail: A Crime of Paradox and Irony

7. Understanding Bribery

8. Civil Disobedience, Punishment, and Injustice

9. Complicity

10. Skepticism about Corporate Punishment Revisited

11. Capital Punishment and the Owl of Minerva

12. Fraud

13. Hate (or Bias) Crime Laws

14. Ignorance of Law:  How to Conceptualize and Maybe Resolve the Issue

15. Incest

16. Inchoate Criminality

17. Insanity

18. Mitigating Factors: A Typology

19. Moral Uncertainty and the Criminal Law

20. Neuroscience and the Criminal Law: Perils and Promises

21. No Offense

22. Political Philosophy and Punishment

23. Proportionality in Punishment

24. The Subjectivist Critique of Proportionality

25. Prostitution

26. Race, Criminal Law and Ethical Life

27. Reckless Beliefs

29. Role Morality

30. Sex Offenses and the Problem of Prevention

31. Stand Your Ground

32. Targeted Killing and the Criminal Law

33. War Crimes and Just War Theory

Larry Alexander is the Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, and author of several books and over 240 articles on legal theory. 

Kimberly Kessler Ferzan is the Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and Joel B. Piassick Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia.  She is co-editor in chief of Law and Philosophy.

Discusses the fundamental interplay between the philosophy of applied ethics and the application of criminal law

Addresses the most pressing issues facing liberal democracies

Includes topics that are the current subjects of policy discussion, Supreme Court cases, and philosophical debates