{"title":"The Internal Morality of Criminal Law.","authors":"James Edwards, Tarek Yusari","doi":"10.1093/ojls/gqad005","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>According to a popular picture, criminal law lives up to the demands of its internal morality when its norms have counterparts with the same content in morality-when it conforms to what we call <i>the mirror principle</i>. This article argues that the popular picture must be redrawn by relying on a second principle, which we call <i>the instrumental principle</i>. Criminal law conforms to the instrumental principle when the existence of its norms helps to prevent or ameliorate moral wrongdoing. Our argument is that the instrumental principle forms part of the internal morality of criminal law, and supplies a justification for criminal laws that depart from the mirror principle. We further suggest that criminal law's internal morality is asymmetrical: though departures from the mirror principle are sometimes justified by the instrumental principle, departures from the latter are not justified by the former.</p>","PeriodicalId":47225,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Journal of Legal Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10876071/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Oxford Journal of Legal Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqad005","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2023/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
According to a popular picture, criminal law lives up to the demands of its internal morality when its norms have counterparts with the same content in morality-when it conforms to what we call the mirror principle. This article argues that the popular picture must be redrawn by relying on a second principle, which we call the instrumental principle. Criminal law conforms to the instrumental principle when the existence of its norms helps to prevent or ameliorate moral wrongdoing. Our argument is that the instrumental principle forms part of the internal morality of criminal law, and supplies a justification for criminal laws that depart from the mirror principle. We further suggest that criminal law's internal morality is asymmetrical: though departures from the mirror principle are sometimes justified by the instrumental principle, departures from the latter are not justified by the former.
期刊介绍:
The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies is published on behalf of the Faculty of Law in the University of Oxford. It is designed to encourage interest in all matters relating to law, with an emphasis on matters of theory and on broad issues arising from the relationship of law to other disciplines. No topic of legal interest is excluded from consideration. In addition to traditional questions of legal interest, the following are all within the purview of the journal: comparative and international law, the law of the European Community, legal history and philosophy, and interdisciplinary material in areas of relevance.