Department of Philosophy

Room A83

University of Stirling

Stirling

FK9 4LA
Scotland

UK

I joined the Department in 1970, after graduate work at Oxford, and a year at the University of Washington, Seattle.

I work mainly on the philosophy of criminal law - in particular on the philosophy of punishment, on issues that connect philosophy of action with the basic principles of criminal liability, and on the moral and political preconditions of criminal liability. My books are Trials and Punishments (CUP, 1986); Intention, Agency and Criminal Liability (Blackwell, 1990); Criminal Attempts (OUP, 1996); Punishment, Communication and Community (OUP 2000); Answering for Crime (Hart 2007), and (with Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Victor Tadros) The Trial on Trial (3): Towards a Normative Theory of the Criminal Trial (Hart 2007).

I have also edited collections of readings on punishment, and edited and contributed to collections of new essays on criminal law theory (Philosophy and the Criminal Law: Principle and Critique, CUP 1998; Defining Crimes, OUP 2005). My most recent project, 'Answering for Crime', for which I held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2002-2005), was on the structures of the criminal law  and of criminal responsibility.

I have also been involved, with Sandra Marshall of this Department, Lindsay Farmer (Glasgow Law School) and Victor Tadros (Warwick Law School) in a three-year inter-disciplinary project, 'The Trial on Trial', funded by the AHRC, to work towards a normative theory of the criminal trial. We have now been awarded a further AHRC grant for a four-year project on 'Criminalization', beginning in February 2008.

I teach moral philosophy, philosophy of action, and philosophy of law. I also contribute to the MSc in Criminology, and to the University's new LLB degree.

Click here for a list of my publications.

Outside Activities

• Associate Member, Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice
• Adviser, NCH Inquiry into the Children's Hearing System 'Where's Kilbrandon Now?'
• Adviser, Scottish Council Foundation project on 'The Public Interest in Criminal and Youth Justice'
• Lectures on sentencing theory to Judicial Studies Committee refresher courses