Gardner on the Philosophy of Criminal Law

Offences and Defences is an outstanding collection of elevenof John Gardner's previously published papers in the philosophyof criminal law. I briefly examine his views on five centralissues: his claims about basic responsibility and whether itshould be construed as relational; his positions on agent neutrality;his arguments about whether moral and criminal wrongs are typicallystrict; his thoughts about the structure of defences, and, finally,what his account of rape reveals about the content of the harmprinciple.