The Limits of Criminal Law

Student edition also available here.

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'An interesting and original contribution to comparative criminal law scholarship […] This book is a valuable addition to this important new body of scholarship.' -- Andrew Cornford, The Edinburgh Law Review, 2020.
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The Limits of Criminal Law shines light from the outer edges of the criminal law in to better understand its core. From a framework of core principles, different borders are explored to test out where criminal law’s normative or performative limits are, in particular, the borders of crime with tort, non-criminal enforcement, medical law, business regulation, administrative sanctions, counter-terrorism and intelligence law.

The volume carefully juxtaposes and compares English and German law on each of these borders, drawing out underlying concepts and key comparative lessons. Each country offers insights beyond their own laws. This double perspective sharpens readers’ critical understanding of the criminal law, and at the same time produces insights that go beyond the perspective of one legal tradition.

The book does not promote a single normative view of the limits of criminal law, but builds a detailed picture of the limits that exist now and why they exist now. This evidence-led approach is particularly important in an ever more interconnected world in which different perceptions of criminal law can lead to profound misunderstandings between countries. The Limits of Criminal Law builds picture of what shapes the criminal law, where those limits come from, and what might motivate legal systems to strain, ignore or strengthen those limits. Some of the most interesting insights come out of the comparison between German systematic approach and doctrinal limits with English law’s focus on process and judgment on individual questions.
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Matthew Dyson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. He is an associate member of 6KBW College Hill Chambers, a Research Fellow of the Utrecht Centre for Accountability and Liability Law and Vice President of the European Society for Comparative Legal History.

Benjamin Vogel is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg, Germany. He is Assistant Editor of the Foreign Review of the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Straf-rechtswissenschaft.