Rethinking Criminal Responsibility

Thursday, 6 October 2022

Join presenter Dr Arlie Loughnan, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Law Theory at the University of Sydney Law School, and chair Tim Game SC for a webinar on Rethinking Criminal Responsibility on Thursday, 6 October, at 5pm.

Criminal responsibility is broadly the organisation of the criminal law around the notion of individual accountability. Throughout her presentation, Dr Loughnan will suggest that there is value in rethinking the significance of criminal responsibility in the law, going beyond existing accounts of its place in criminal law, and recognising the role it plays in organising what she calls relations of responsibility. She will provide a brief overview of the analysis that supports this argument. The analysis chiefly develops along two axes – one socio-historical and one theoretical. On the socio-historical axis, it reassesses the general story told about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility from around the turn of the twentieth century, charting the gradual and distinctive way in which criminal law came to be organised around principles of criminal responsibility, and what this makes possible and what it excludes. On the second axis, it reconsiders the significance of criminal responsibility in criminal law, exposing the complexity and dynamism of the relations of responsibility that subtend criminal responsibility principles and practices and painting a picture of multiplicity, specificity and variation across the criminal law field. This analysis is based on detailed studies of key moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of key sets of relations of responsibility which is plotted on a tripartite frame, between self, others and the state. The presentation is based on a study published as Self, Others, and the State: Relations of Criminal Responsibility (CUP 2020).