Punishment and Responsibility

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Description
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 thinks links the distinction between guilt and innocence closely to the ideal of the rule of law, and thereby attempts to bypass 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.
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Contents
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 conception of Responsibility
9.    Postscript: Responsibility and Retribution
Notes
Appendix
Index
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Author Details
The late H.L.A Hart was Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford from 1952 to 1969 and Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford from 1973 to 1978.
John Gardner is the current Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford.
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