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Legal and social murder : what's the difference
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Norrie, Alan W. (2018) Legal and social murder : what's the difference. Criminal Law Review (7). pp. 531-542.
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Abstract
I will focus on the main element in the legal definition that distinguishes murder and manslaughter, mens rea. I will reflect on two issues that ultimately may be conjoined. The first concerns the form of mens rea for murder that involves an intention to cause serious harm, where intention involves foresight of a virtual certainty that harm will ensue. Here, I consider the possibility that such an (indirect) intention may be more likely to be found where actors within a system have responsibility for, and the vantage point of oversight of, the system as a whole. The second concerns the potential flexibility of the law of indirect intention in a situation where the law retains a certain ‘moral elbow room’, which may be used where a jury is ‘entitled to find’ that a defendant foresaw an outcome as virtually certain. This is said, most recently by the Supreme Court in Jogee, to lead to an evidential standpoint, which leaves the precise nature of the legal rule open to interpretation by a jury. These two points, jointly and severally, suggest that the gap between murder in law and as it is perceived in a setting like Grenfell may not be as wide as is sometimes thought.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare K Law [Moys] > KM Common Law, Public Law |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Murder -- Law and legislation, Murder -- Social aspects, Manslaughter -- Law and legislation, Manslaughter -- Social aspects | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Criminal Law Review | ||||||
| Publisher: | Sweet & Maxwell | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0011-135X | ||||||
| Official Date: | 2018 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 15 August 2018 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 15 August 2019 | ||||||
| Number: | 7 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 531-542 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Publisher Statement: | This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Criminal Law Review following peer review. The definitive published version Norrie, Alan W. (2018) Legal and social murder : what's the difference. Criminal Law Review (7). pp. 531-542. is available online on Westlaw UK or from Thomson Reuters DocDel service. | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
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