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Civil procedure has been the primary focus of Adrian Zuckerman’s evidentiary scholarship in recent decades. In contributing to a celebration of his profound and lasting influence on the procedural law and scholarship of England and Wales, this essay concentrates on Zuckerman’s earlier work primarily addressing criminal evidence and procedure. It identifies and elaborates on three particularly significant conceptual innovations in Zuckerman’s evidentiary writings concerning the (1) disciplinary domain; (2) institutional context(s); and (3) normative sources of evidence law. These conceptual advances are expounded in terms of three correlative dynamic disciplinary and institutional transitions: (1) from ‘Law of Evidence’ to ‘Evidence and Proof’; (2) from transubstantivity to procedural differentiation; and (3) from evidentiary rules to principled discretion. In his ground-breaking work on the principles of criminal evidence, I argue, Zuckerman challenged us to rethink the disciplinary contours, normative foundations and jurisprudential methodologies of common law evidence. Against the prevailing common law orthodoxy of a Thayerite model of generic exclusionary rules, Zuckerman insisted that criminal evidence should be reconceptualized as the practical wisdom of principled discretion rooted in the normative values and objectives of penal justice.

This chapter examines whether consciousness causes or does not cause behavior in the context of the Western legal system. It considers the challenges presented by the new neuroscience literature for criminal jurisprudence, including the possibility that the claims of neuroscience will have an impact beyond what it purports to prove. For example, defense lawyers may try to use on behalf of their clients any findings of the new brain research that negate or diminish the attribution of criminal responsibility. The chapter looks at models of attributing criminal fault, whether existing theoretical models are so effective that a change in models of fault attribution would represent bad policy or social consequence, and why neuroscience poses a social threat. It analyzes the epiphenomenality of consciousness and legal excusing conditions, classical philosophy and responsibility, theological notions of responsibility and free will, and intent as an element of criminal fault. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Benjamin Libet’s views on moral and legal consciousness.

This chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to provide an analytical account of the intellectual and institutional forces promoting and driving core developments in English criminal jurisprudence from 1800 to 1957. These institutional forces are the judiciary, along with the legal profession; Parliament; and ad hoc governmental or other officially established bodies which have been charged with scrutiny of any part of the criminal law. The study identifies three periods of conceptual development: 1800–32, 1833–1907, and 1908–57. The first period, running into the early 1830s, is characterized by two dominating concerns: the form and accessibility of criminal law, and the capital punishment question. The beginning of the second period is naturally demarcated by the setting up of Brougham's Criminal Law Commissions and Macaulay's Draft Indian Penal Code, events of considerable theoretical significance.

Few female judges were appointed to the benches of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and Special Court for Sierra Leone. Nevertheless, those appointments resulted in an active contribution of these women judges to the development of international criminal law, as is shown in the jurisprudence. Judges give judgement on the evidence, facts, and law before them, but women judges have been noted for advancing the existing law through broad interpretation. With the appointment of women investigators and prosecutors, more prosecutions for crimes of sexual violence followed. This is important as it progressively developed a field of law that had until then not, or only in a more limited manner, been adjudicated upon before international courts.

This chapter deals with the following traditional titles of dispute (i) pāruṣya; (ii) sāhasa; (iii) steya; and (iv) strī sȧngraha. Devaṇa has made a very significant change in his presentation on the subject. Instead of mentioning the different offences as the other digest writers have done, he simply gives the general principles of criminal jurisprudence. Among the principles mentioned are (i) lesser or harsher punishments can be given for the same offence depending on the vaṛna of the victim and the accused; (ii) excessive joy and anger can be mitigating circumstances; (iii) a bona fide act done in good faith is not culpable; (iv) where two parties are guilty of committing the same offence against each other, the one who initiates the process is more guilty; (v) the party which continues with the offence while the other has stopped is more guilty.