Book Review
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Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
DAVID PRENDERGAST*
BOOK REVIEW
Reviewing: Kai Ambos, Antony Duff, Julian Roberts and Thomas Weigend (eds.), Core Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice: Volume I, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 483 pp.
20th century linguistics identified a universal grammar of human languages.1 While languages are divergent in content, they all observe certain basic rules such as distinguishing verbs from nouns. An associated, contested claim is that there is a language instinct; that the basic grammar is innate, and, in a sense, it couldn’t be otherwise.2 Universal grammar is surprising because language seems to be conventional and contingent the whole way through, and it might be expected that similarities, when found, would be traceable to a common historical source. Criminal law, its substance and processes, would seem just as contingent as language, and that shared features around the world are to be traced to historical events of imperialism and the spread of ideas. But what if there is a universal grammar of criminal law? What if, at their core, there is a certain functionally intelligible way for criminal law structures to be? Even if such a thesis is implausible, it is a brilliant device for illuminating the nature of criminal law, as Finbarr McAuley and Paul McCutcheon’s Criminal Law: A Grammar3 showed 20 years ago with its seminal historical and comparative survey of criminal law. Now we have Core Concepts in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice: Anglo-German Dialogues Volume
*David Prendergast, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin. E-Mail: [email protected]. 1
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (Penguin Books 1994) 22–24. 2
Ibid.
3
(Round Hall 1999).
DAVID PRENDERGAST
I, (‘‘Core Concepts’’ from now on) edited by Kai Ambos, Antony Duff, Julian Roberts and Thomas Weigend, the first volume to be published as part of the Anglo-German Dialogue project lead by Professor Ambos at University of Goettingen.4 In the introductory chapter, the editors describe the aims behind Core Concepts as including seeing ‘‘whether it is possible to articulate a common grammar or set of foundational concepts that could provide the basis for productive trans-jurisdictional discussion and progress’’ (pp. 3–4). They clarify that this work is not seeking to uncover a pre-existing universal grammar of criminal law, but might go towards constructing it. The eleven chapters that follow the book’s introduction are organised into two parts: substantive criminal law and criminal procedure. The contributions rigorously adhere to the book’s method of comparative conceptual analysis as indicated by the book’s title and explained in the introductory chapter. All but two of Core Concepts’ chapters are co-authored with one author German law-based and the other author(s) based in Northern/ Western common law-heritage jurisdictions. Every sentence is endorsed by the relevant home expert and the main pitfalls and limitations of comparative legal an
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