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Henderson, Emma --- "Principles of Criminal Law by Simon Bronnitt and Bernadette McSherry" [2001] AltLawJl 77; (2001) 26(4) Alternative Law Journal 206

Reviews

Principles of Criminal Law

by Simon Braniff and Bernadette McSherry; LBC Information Services 2001; $112.00 softcover.

Providing students with the analytical tools necessary for rigorous and critical examination of core legal principles is not an easy task. In the undergraduate criminal law course it is all the more difficult because of a lack of effective teaching materials. As the traditional text or casebook posits the criminal law as reducible to a few coherent and rational principles, those who attempt to stray outside this paradigm have found little support. While teachers have been able to access sources such as the DEETYA Gender in the Core Curriculum materials and various excellent publications such as Peter Rush's Criminal Law, there has been a significant lack of texts which are both comprehensive and situated within a theoretically challenging framework.

It is into this vacuum that Principles of Criminal Law emerges. While following the format of the 'Priestly' requirements for the criminal law course, this text goes much further than a traditional textbook by incorporating critical theory from both criminal law and criminal justice, recent crime statistics, and secondary sources such as MCCOC Reports and other law reform material. Arguing that broader perspectives encourage a more realistic account of the criminal law and more imaginative debates about the scope and possibility of law reform, Bronitt and McSherry have written a text that aims to enable students to engage critically with the materials and to begin the task of unmasking the internal contra­ dictions within the narrative of the criminal law.

The text is reader-friendly in format. Students will appreciate the clearly set out tables which demonstrate jurisdictional differences, and the flow charts which illustrate procedural methods. While there is no adequate substitute for the first-hand reading of primary sources, the use of 'case studies' instead of the more usual, oft-decontextualised, case excerpts make for easy comprehension. One can only hope that this ease of comprehension might encourage students to actually read the judgments for themselves.

Each chapter comes complete with 'perspective' sections, where particularly contentious legal issues are critiqued. For instance, the cultural rights/feminist rights clash within the debate over female genital mutilation is highlighted in the Assaults section, consent and sadomasochism is discussed in the Sexual Assaults section, and the question of 'drug courts' and the nexus between drugs and crime are debated in the Drug Offences section. There are sections highlighting jurisdictional comparisons (for example, the different approaches to drug regulation in the UK, US and Australia). As well as these 'perspective' sections, each chapter explores those issues usu­ ally sidelined by more traditional texts. For instance, issues such as the regulation of markets in illicit goods, a com­ parison of the treatment meted out to tax cheats and welfare cheats and the legal issues arising out of public injecting rooms sit comfortably with the usual sections on the external and men­ tal elements of specific crimes.

Particularly important is the fact that Bronnitt and McSherry emphasise the growth in the technocratisation of justice by providing discussion of crimes left out of more traditional approaches to the criminal law course. The chapter on public order offences and its discussion of hate crimes, mandatory sentencing and the right to protest comes to mind. Sections on corporate liability for crime, the role of privacy in various criminal issues, and computer crimes all leave the teacher in the frustrating situation of knowing that there is sim­ ply not time in a semester to cover all of these important issues.

The text is well written and well edited and I have only two reservations. The first is that the theoretical frame­ work, set out so capably in the first three chapters, may well prove beyond the reach of first and second year students. On a first reading, I was concerned that students who had not before come into contact with critical legal theory might experience considerable difficulty accessing the terrain; careful classroom discussion would be needed in the early stages of the course. My second concern is not directed at the book but at the growing tendency in legal education to move away from reading primary sources. This text is so interesting, and so full of information, that it may be very difficult to encourage students to actually read for themselves the judgements and texts discussed.

EMMA HENDERSON

Emma Henderson teaches law and legal studies at La Trobe University.


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