Legal History: Crime and Punishment Research Guide

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Henderson has written a most readable book about the development of US federal criminal law between 1801 and 1829. He raises several challenging questions: How well did the [criminal justice] system protect society? Did the system evolve in relation to social and economic change? What was the role of politics in this evolution? Did oppression occur?

This book examines the relationship between legal tradition and national identity to offer a critical and historical perspective on the study of criminal law. It develops a radically different approach to questions of responsibility and subjectivity, and was among the first studies to combine appreciation of the institutional and historical context in which criminal law is practised with a critical understanding of the law itself. Applying contemporary social theory to the particular case of nineteenth-century Scottish law, Lindsay Farmer is able to develop a critique of modern criminal law theory in general. He traces the development of the modern characteristics of criminal law and legal order, tracing the relationship between legal practice and national culture, and showing how contemporary criminal law theory fundamentally misrepresents the character of modern criminal justice.

This is the first reference work to offer the wealth of material on women and crime to a general audience. More than 200 authoritative contributors from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia examine the subject from the perspectives of offenders, offenses, and theories on offending, victims and victimology, the criminal justice system, punishment and treatment.

Following the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, a group of politicians began to agitate for reform of England's "bloody code" of criminal statutes. This examines the politics and propaganda of criminal law reform from 1808 to the Whig succession to power in 1830.

Foundations of Criminal Law presents a comprehensive examination of the general part of criminal law--that is, the foundational elements of liability--through interdisciplinary readings drawn primarily from law, philosophy, & the behavioral sciences. The selections range from classical treatments to contemporary approaches, & the topics include--among others--theories of punishment, mental states, causation, justification & excuse, & sentencing. A general introduction precedes each section & the readings are followed by comments & questions designed to engage the reader analytically.

Why does society punish criminals? What political principles underlie the determination of punishment to suit the crime? In Founding the Criminal Law, Pestritto studies policies concerning crime and punishment in early America to better understand political thought during the founding era, bringing fresh insights to modern debates about the consequences of lawbreaking. Basing his research on original government documents, state constitutions, the arguments of America's founders, and the writings of such influential reformers as William Penn, William Bradford, and Thomas Jefferson, Pestritto analyzes the complex mix of punishment philosophies at work in early America. He shows how the political principles that guided America's founders in their selection of criminal punishments contribute to the current debate over crime and justice in America.

New South Wales is that rare political creation, a state founded for and upon the criminal law. The history of its criminal law from settlement to Federation is uniquely fascinating. Drawing on his range of experience as a university scholar, a criminal law QC and a judge, the author explains how Britain's criminal laws were established and developed in its (arguably) most successful colony. There are three themes: the horror and savagery of the criminal law transported to Australia and imposed there;the constitutional importance of basic criminal law rules requiring certainty of proof;the corrupt but necessary role of mercy in the administration of the law.

This work describes and illustrates the evolution of criminological theory in Britain and the US. The editor explains how a recognizable criminology emerged in the campaigns of penal reformers in the 18th and early 19th century, and was then studied as an academic field in the 20th century. The book intersperses writings of 300 years of criminology with criminological historians' own arguments about the development of their discipline.

The new critical edition of the works & correspondence of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) is being prepared & published under the supervision of the Bentham Committee of University College London. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham's best-known work, is a classic text in modern philosophy & jurisprudence. First published in 1789, it contains the important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy & a pioneering study of crime & punishment, both of which remain at the heart of contemporary debates in moral & political philosophy, economics, & legal theory. Printed here in full is the definitive edition, edited by the distinguished scholars J. H. Burns & H. L. A. Hart.

Were we a nation of rogues? Beyond recurrent images of convicts and bushrangers, what do we know about ordinary people's experience of crime and punishment in colonial Australia? Despite an abundance of sources, it is only recently that this question has been framed and answers sought. the impetus has come from concern with current issues such as relations between police and Aboriginal communities, and the significance of sex/gender in our social order. These essays deal with the police and the criminal law in action. Their subjects include women under the convict system in New South Wales; the paradoxical relationship between race, justice and criminal law in north Queensland; and the regulation of the vagrant in late-nineteenth-century Melbourne. In telling individual stories, they point to patterns of common experience. This new and accessible social history makes a forceful contribution to contemporary debate.

The adversary system of trial, the defining feature of the Anglo-American criminal procedure developed late in English legal history. For centuries, defendants were forbidden to have counsel, and lawyers seldom appeared for the prosecution either. Trial was meant to be an occasion for the defendant to answer the charges in person. The transformation from lawyer-free to lawyer-dominated criminal trial happened within the space of about a century, from the 1690s to the 1780s. This book explains how the lawyers captured the trial.

Benedict Arnold & Cesar Chavez, John Wilkes Booth & Martin Luther King, Sirhan Sirhan, the Berrigans, the Founding Fathers, & the suffragists -- all have engaged in political behavior defined at one time or another as "criminal." Though the fire & fury of some of these names have been dimmed by the passage of time, their protest, civil disobedience, & even rebellion are refreshed in every American generation. Now revised and expanded, this widely praised & monumental work (awarded "Best Book in Law" by the Association of American Publishers) chronicles the uninterrupted & ongoing story of dissent, disobedience, violence, & rebellion in America, from the colonial era to the Oklahoma City bombing.

Published under the superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring, with an introduction by John Hill Burton and including Bowring's Memoirs and Correspondence of Bentham. This well-known collection saw the first complete edition of Bentham's works and includes John Bowring's Memoir of Bentham.