Why Criminal Law?

Jo Miles is a University Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity College. Here, Jo discusses the Criminal Law, an area of legal study and one of the required first year subjects for Law students at Cambridge.

Criminal law is an area of law with which most of us feel closely familiar, not least thanks to the enduring popularity of TV crime dramas. When asked by interviewers, “Why do you want to read law?” very probably part of an honest answer to that question for most candidates would involve reference to the latest drama featuring fearless barristers pleading their clients’ causes. (Don’t worry — we don’t penalise candidates who fail to mention this motivation in answering that standard question. In my case, it was a TV drama about a famous Victorian criminal law barrister — and no, I didn’t confess to that in my university applications either!)

So why the public obsession with crime (especially, it seems, homicide) and criminal law? Criminal law is one of the more immediately accessible areas of law — we can all readily grasp the facts of these sorts of cases and so have a stab (pun intended — criminal lawyers tend to have a black sense of humour…) at the legal, philosophical, and policy questions to which they give rise.

Some examples of the issues we consider in criminal law are:

• Alex accidentally shoots Bob (his best friend) dead in the course of attempting to kill Chris (whom he hates). Of what crimes, if any, should Alex be convicted, and why?
• Helen has been subjected to years of emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of her husband Rob for several years, and then one evening, fearful that he is going to attack her and her young son physically, fatally stabs him. (Fans of BBC Radio 4’s The Archers will recognise that one!) Should Helen be convicted of murder or manslaughter, or acquitted altogether? Why?
• A group of shipwrecked people who several days ago ran out of food conclude that the only hope for any of them to survive long enough to be rescued would be to resort to cannibalism. Should they (a) gang up on the weakest member of the group and kill him, (b) agree to draw lots as a means of identifying which of them will be killed, or © not kill anyone and hope for rescue, even at the risk of their all dying? More specifically for us as lawyers: if they do kill a member of the group, should the killer have a defence to a charge of murder and if so why? And should the member of the group who does the actual killing be treated any differently in law from the ones that helped and encouraged him or her to do it?
• How should the criminal law deal with those who claim that they were “not responsible” for their actions because they are intoxicated by alcohol or illegal substances, or because they have a psychiatric condition that impairs their powers of reasoning or self-control?

All of these are examples of the sorts of issues that you will explore in your study of criminal law, which is a compulsory first year subject for students at Cambridge who take the three-year law degree. Under current rules, it is one of the seven subjects that all students who wish to practise in England & Wales must have studied if they wish to qualify as a solicitor or barrister, which is one reason for making it compulsory.

But even for those who do not plan to qualify for practice — or to practise specifically in the criminal courts — criminal law provides a powerful introduction to some core legal concepts such as “responsibility”, “autonomy” and “causation”. It also invites us to reflect on what behaviours we as a society deem to be so bad that they merit prosecution and punishment by the State, rather than being left to private individuals to resolve through civil proceedings and compensation. And it is all that which makes Law so fascinating as a subject of intellectual inquiry.

Are you interested in learning more about criminal law? Check out the criminal law resources from HE+.

You can find more information on the subjects that first year Law students study at Cambridge, including the “Foundation Subjects”, on the Faculty’s website.

The information in this article is considered correct at the time of publication.