The Boundaries of Blame

Louise Kennefick is Senior Lecturer in Criminal Law at the University of Glasgow and researches across criminal law theory and criminal justice. She is a Glasgow Law Fellow and Irish Research Council Scholar, and her work appears in publications such as the Modern Law Review and Criminology and Criminal Justice.

• Introduction; Part I. Purpose: 1. Activating the criminal law – establishing the duty to advance social justice; Part II. Paradigm and Principle: 2. The real person approach – recognising vulnerability at culpability evaluation; 3. Proportionality – recalibrating the desert calculus; 4. Parsimony – offsetting misrecognition at culpability evaluation; Part III. Partial Excuse (Practice, Doctrine, and Theory): 5. Universality – understanding and expanding the bounds of partial excuse; 6. Diminished responsibility – exploring the template for the UPD; 7. Bounded causal theory – rethinking the rationale of partial excuse; Part IV. Proposal: 8. The universal partial defence – outlining a blueprint for reform; Summary of key contributions.