Contemporary Challenges to Criminal Justice
This study provides a critical examination of seminal issues within the main areas of criminal justice: its theoretical framework, domestic and comparative criminal justice, transnational and international criminal law. Exploring some of the most interesting challenges arising in these fields, it examines the impact of 'public morality' on sentencing policy, murder and the mandatory life sentence, genocide and the notion of magnitude and incitement to terrorism. Taking an approach that is fully integrated in contemporary criminal justice scholarship, it offers a diverse and expert perspective. With a comprehensive introduction and conclusion drawing the various strands together, it offers a rigorous, coherent overview of the key issues in play in contemporary international criminal justice. This diversity and expertise ensures its appeal to a large audience of students, scholars and practitioners of criminal justice around the world.
Dr Paul Behrens is Reader (Associate Professor) in International Law at the University of Edinburgh. He has worked in the past at the University of Leicester, is a member of the Surrey International Law Centre and the Scottish Centre for International Law, Associate of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and member of the Society of Legal Scholars. Dr Behrens' particular research interests lie in the fields of diplomatic and consular law and international criminal law. He is author of Diplomatic Interference and the Law (Hart Publishing 2016), co-editor of the books Diplomatic Law in a New Millennium (OUP 2017), The Criminal Law of Genocide (Ashgate 2007) and Elements of Genocide (Routledge 2012) and has written numerous articles in these fields. At Edinburgh, he teaches the LLM courses on diplomatic and consular law and on international criminal law. Dr Behrens has been visiting lecturer and researcher at the universities of Stockholm, Uppsala, Copenhagen, the Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budpaest.. Dr Behrens reguarly contributes to newspapers (including Guardian, Scotsman, Süddeutsche Zeitung) on issues of constitutional and international law and has given radio and television interviews on these topics.
This study provides a critical examination of seminal issues within the main areas of criminal justice: its theoretical framework, domestic and comparative criminal justice, transnational and international criminal law. Exploring some of the most interesting challenges arising in these fields, it examines the impact of ‘public morality’ on sentencing policy, murder and the mandatory life sentence, genocide and the notion of magnitude and incitement to terrorism. Taking an approach that is fully integrated in contemporary criminal justice scholarship, it offers a diverse and expert perspective. With a comprehensive introduction and conclusion drawing the various strands together, it offers a rigorous, coherent overview of the key issues in play in contemporary international criminal justice. This diversity and expertise ensures its appeal to a large audience of students, scholars and practitioners of criminal justice around the world.