SOC379H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: James Fitzjames, John Stuart Mill, Prohibition In The United States
Document Summary
Laws serves the purpose of making a moral statement about how citizens should behave [prohibition era and attempts to prosecute and punish selective service violators]. John stuart mill argued in his essay on liberty that the primary function of criminal law is to prevent individuals from doing harm to others. Sir james fitzjames stephen saw criminal law as serving a much broader function in the cultivation of personal responsibility, arguing that the meaning of responsibility is liability to punishment . Stephen regarded the criminal law as a fundamental means for developing a sense of individual responsibility and considered the use of criminal law as essential for this purpose. Lord devlin argued that the criminal law as we know it is based upon moral principles and furthermore that in a number of crimes its function is simply to enforce a moral principle and nothing else .
