Law 2101 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Consequentialism, Well-Founded Relation, Diminished Responsibility
Document Summary
Crimes: socially proscribed wrongs, prohibited to maintain orderly society and protect its members. Criminal law is public law: the defendant v. the state (on behalf of society as a whole) Violation of criminal law => censure and punishment (infringes defendant"s individual rights and should only be ultima ratio) Criminalisation: declaring that certain conduct constitutes a crime and shall be avoided. What conduct should be criminalised and why: minimalist principle: only use criminal law as last resort (ultima ratio) to control behaviour (due to its harsh consequences); other mechanisms include morality, social conventions, peer pressure, civil law, administrative law. All those principles should be weighed against each other in policy debates on criminalisation. Considering wrongfulness as part of actus reus and blameworthiness of mens rea does not always meet the complexity of those concepts. Common law: conditional intent and conscious negligence are substituted with recklessness, a mens rea between intent and negligence.
