Review of The Criminal Law’s Person, edited by Claes Lernestedt and Matt Matravers. Oxford: Hart, 2022

Abstract

The edited volume covers reflections on the concept of the “person”, written by criminal law theorists and philosophers. In the introduction, the editors sketch their general approach, which is uncommon in moral philosophy and criminal law theory. Instead of painting an idealistic, non-empirical, coherent picture of what it means to be a person, they remind us that the criminal law’s person is a “multifaceted, semi-coherent” being (p. 14). They point out that different pictures are painted by different stakeholders. Furthermore, they argue that the law should not insulate itself against what the sciences outside law have to tell us; and they identify striking the balance between a backward-looking and a forward-looking perspective as an important question – a recurring theme in a number of chapters.