Punishment and Responsibility

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, has had an enduring impact on academic and public debates about criminal responsibility and criminal punishment. Forty years on, its arguments are as powerful as ever. H.L.A. Hart offers an alternative to retributive thinking about criminal punishment that nevertheless preserves the central distinction between guilt and innocence. He also provides an account of criminal responsibility that links the distinction between guilt and innocence closely to the ideal of the rule of law, and thereby attempts to by-pass unnerving debates about free will and determinism. Always engaged with live issues of law and public policy, Hart makes difficult philosophical puzzles accessible and immediate to a wide range of readers. For this new edition, otherwise a reproduction of the original, John Gardner adds an introduction engaging critically with Hart's arguments, and explaining the continuing importance of Hart's ideas in spite of the intervening revival of retributive thinking in both academic and policy circles.Unavailable for ten years, the new edition of Punishment and Responsibility makes available again the central text in the field for a new generation of academics, students and professionals engaged in criminal justice and penal policy.

ISBN 0199534780   Pages 336 ISBN13 9780199534784 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press   Weight (grammes) 407 Imprint Oxford University Press   Published in Oxford Format Paperback   Previous ISBN 9780198251811 Publication date 06 Mar 2008   Height (mm) 216 Writer of introduction Gardner, John   Width (mm) 139 Library of Congress K5103   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY 345.001   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

Introduction; 1. Prolegomenon to the Principles of Punishment; 2. Legal Responsibility and Excuses; 3. Murder and the Principles of Punishment: England and the United States; 4. Acts of Will and Responsibility; 5. Intention and Punishment; 6. Negligence, Mens Rea, and Criminal Responsibility; 7. Punishment and the Elimination of Responsibility; 8. Changing Conceptions of Responsibility; 9. Postscript: Responsibility and Retribution

"Punishment and Responsibility is still regarded as one of the cornerstones of both penal philosophy and the burgeoning field of criminal law theory in Britain, Australia, Israel and North America. Its idea of criminal responsibility ... is the inspiration for or counterpoint to almost all serious scholarship in English in the field published over the last 35 years."--Nicola Lacey, A Life of H.L.A. Hart (OUP, 2004)

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