Main description:

In print for the first time in over ten years, Act and Crime provides a unified account of the theory of action presupposed by both Anglo-American criminal law and the morality that underlies it. The book defends the view that human actions are always volitionally caused bodily movements and nothing else. The theory is used to illuminate three major problems in the drafting and the interpretation of criminal codes: 1) what the voluntary act requirement
both does and should require; 2) what complex descriptions of actions prohibited by criminal codes both do and should require (in addition to the doing of a voluntary act); and 3) when two actions are 'the same' for purposes of assessing whether multiple prosecutions and multiple punishments are warranted. The
book both contributes to the development of a coherent theory of action in philosophy, and it provides both legislators and judges (and the lawyers who argue to both) a grounding in three of the most basic elements of criminal liability.

Contents:

Preface to the Paperback Edition ; 1. Introduction: Criminal Law's Three Conduct Requirements ; PART I: BASIC ACTS AND THE ACT REQUIREMENT ; 2. The Doctrinal Unity of the Act Requirement ; 3. The Orthodox View of the Act Requirement and Its Normative Defence ; 4. The Metaphysics of Basic Acts I: The Existence of Actions ; 5. The Metaphysics of Basic Acts II: The Identity of Actions with Bodily Movements ; 6. The Metaphysics of Basic Acts III: Volitions as the Essential Source of Actions ; PART II: COMPLEX ACTION DESCRIPTIONS AND THE ACTUS REUS REQUIREMENT ; 7. The Doctrinal Basis of the Actus Reus Requirement ; 8. Unity in Complex Action Description and in the Actus Reus Requirement ; 9. The Normative Basis for the Actus Reus Requirement ; 10. The Metaphysics of Complex Actions I: The Dependence of Complex Actions on Basic Acts ; 11. The Metaphysics of Complex Actions II: The Identity of Complex Actions with Basic Acts ; PART III: THE IDENTITY CONDITIONS OF ACTIONS AND THE DOUBLE JEOPARDY REQUIREMENT ; 12. The Doctrinal and Normative Basis of the Double Jeopardy Requirement ; 13. Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Notions of the 'Sameness' of Action-Types ; 14. Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Notions of the 'Sameness' of Act-Tokens