PPAS 4070 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: English Criminal Law, Summary Offence, Moral Universalism

• School: York University
• Department: Public Policy and Administration Studies
• Course: PPAS 4070
• Professor: Kirk Atkinson

Document Summary

Douglas hay: property, authority, and the criminal law. English criminal law and its reliance on terror, majesty, and mercy. Criminal law was based on terror, in the form of punishments meted out to the labouring poor. Justice: established through the veneration of the rule of law, the doctrine of legal equality and a universal morality obscured the fact that the protection of property was the very bedrock of criminal law. Mercy: a legal system that is checked by fear and compassion and which hope of mercy is served in justifying the legal order, pardons were often used to favour the more privilege sections of english society o. It allowed the class that passed one of the bloodiest penal codes in europe to congratulate itself on its humanity: romantic crimes - crimes committed by the oppressed against the powerful. Beattie: crime and the courts in england, 1660 - 1800.