Moral Limits of the Criminal Law – serie

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.

Offense to Others is the second volume of Joel Feinberg's magisterial work, The Moral Limits of Criminal Law, a four-volume work that addresses the question: what kinds of conduct may the state make criminal without infringing on the moral autonomy of individual citizens? In volume I, Harm to Others (also available in paperback), the author illuminated the moral implications of the `harm principle' and demonstrated how it must be interpreted if it is to be a plausible guide for legislation. In this second volume, he focuses on the `offence principle', the principle that preventing shock, disgust, or revulsion is always a morally relevant reason for legal prohibitions. Early chapters clarify the concept of an `offended mental state' and further contrast the concept of offence with harm. The law of nuisance is then considered as a model for statutes creating `morals offences' and the author shows its inadequacy as a model for understanding `profound offences'. The differences between minor and profound offences are examined in detail as well as the conceptual, moral, and judicial problems raised by obscenity, pornography, and `dirty' words.

The Moral Limits of Criminal Law is a four-volume work that answers the question: what kinds of conduct may a legislature make criminal without infringing the moral autonomy of individual citizens? Volume three, 'Harm to Self', tackles the riddles associated with the commonly proposed principle called 'legal Paternalism'. It evaluates (and rejects) the principle that it can be right to impose coercion on a person 'for his own good', whatever his own wishes in the matter. Chapters in this section discuss the concept of personal autonomy (or 'sovereignty'), voluntariness, and assumption of risk, as well as 'failures of consent' because of duress, fraud, and other factors incompatible with voluntary behaviour.