The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law

This handbook explores criminal law systems from around the world, with the express aim of stimulating comparison and discussion. General principles of criminal liability receive prominent coverage in each essay--including discussions of rationales for punishment, the role and design of criminal codes, the general structure of criminal liability, accounts ofmens rea, and the rights that criminal law is designed to protect--before the authors turn to more specific offenses like homicide, theft, sexual offenses, victimless crimes, and terrorism. This key reference covers all of the world's major legal systems--common, civil, Asian, and Islamic law traditions--with essays on sixteen countries on six different continents. The introduction places each country within traditional distinctions among legal systems and explores noteworthy similarities and differences among the countries covered, providing an ideal entry into the fascinating range of criminal law systems in use the world over.

Kevin Jon Heller is Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School. He is the author of The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (2011). Markus D. Dubber is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor of Police and the Liberal State (Stanford University Press, 2008), and Modern Histories of Crime and Punishment (Stanford University Press, 2007).