Testing Fidelity to Legal Values: Official Involvement and Criminal Justice

The article examines the current criminal law and possible justifications for it with respect to three areas that are located between prosecutorial discretion and defences. These areas are officially-induced mistakes of law, entrapment, and conduct motivated by a desire to bring someone else to justice or to restore property. Common themes in the justifications for the avoidance of punishment in these examples suggest an underlying principle of fidelity to legal values, which should guide procedural and substantive law.