The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Volume 1: Harm to Others

This book focuses on the 'harm principle', the common-sense view that prevention of harm to persons other than the perpetrator is a legitimate purpose of criminal legislation, and presents a detailed analysis of the concept and definition of harm, which it applies to a host of practical and theoretical issues.

General Introduction: The Basic Question of the Book * The Concept of Moral Legitimacy * The Idea of a Liberty-Limiting Prinviple * Commonly Proposed Liberty-Limiting Principles * Liberalism * Methodology * Primary and Derrivative Crimes * Alternatives to the Criminal Law * Skepticism: VOLUME ONE: HARM TO OTHERS I Harms as Setbacks to Interest: Meaning of "Harm" * Welfare Interests and Ulterior Interests * Interests and Wants * Harms, Hurts, and Offenses * The Manner in which Acts and Other Events Affect Interests When They Do Harm * The Concept of an Interest Network * Legally Protectable Interests *: II Puzzling Cases: Moral Harm * Other-Regarding Interests and Vicarious Harms * Death and Posthumous Harms * Surviving Interests * The Proper Subject of Surviving Interests * Doomed Interest and the Dating of Harm * A Note on Posthumous Wrongs * Birth and Prenatal Harms *: III Harming as Wronging: The Verbal Forms: To Harm and to Wrong * Harming and Injuring * Moral Indefensibility * Harming as Right-Violating * Harm and Consent: the Volenti maxim * The Concept of a Victim * The "Casual Component" in Harming *: IV Failing to Prevent Harm: East Rescue and the Bad Samaritan * The Confusion of Active Aid with Gratuitous Benefit * Lord macauley's Line-Drawing Problem * Omissions an Other Inactions * Are Legal Duties to Rescue Undue Interference with Liberty? * The Moral Significance of Causation * The Consequences of Omissions * The Exclusion of Causally Irrelevant Necessary Conditions * Summary *: V Assessing and Comparing Harms: Mediating Maxims for the Application of the Harm Principle * The Magnitude of the Harm * The Probability of the Harm * Aggregative Harms * Statistical Discrimination and the Net Reductiom of Harm * The Relative Importance of the Harm * The Interest in Liberty on the Scales * Summary of Restrictions on the Harm Principle *: VI Fairly Imputing Harms: Comparative Interests * Harm to Public Interests * Accumulative Harms * Environmental Pollution as a Public Accumulative Harm * Imitative Harms * Summary of Additional Restrictions to the Harm Principle *: Notes * Index