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References
Lynch vDPP for Northern Ireland [1975] A.C. 653.
Ibid. at 655F.
Peter Goodrich,Legal Discourse: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal Analysis (London: MacMillan, 1987), 190.
Herbert Fingarette, “Victimisation: A Legalist Analysis of Coercion, Deception, Undue Influence and Excusable Prison Escape”,Washington and Lee Law Review 65 (1985), 42–115
Thomas Hobbes,Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (London: Penguin, 1968), 346–7.
A.W. Brian Simpson,Cannibalism and the Common Law (London: Penguin, 1986).
It appears that there is such a defence, of a limited nature (Conway [1988] 3 All E.R. 1025;Martin [1989] 1 All E.R. 652).
The Times, 13 June 1988.
Jeremy Bentham,Of Laws in General, ed. H.L.A. Hart (London: Athlone Press, 1970), 18–28, 133–41; John Austin,The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, ed. H.L.A. Hart (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954), 134–42.
J.F. Stephen,A History of the Criminal Law of England (London: Macmillan, 1883), 3 vols., vol. 2, 107–108.
Anthony Kenny, “Duressper Minas as a Defence to Crime”,The Ivory Tower: Essays in Philosophy and Public Policy (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 31–38.
Michel Foucault,The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: an Introduction, tr. Robert Hurley (London: Allen Lane, 1979), 138.233.
According to Derrida, supplementarity is always “dangerous”, in that the necessity of invoking a supplement throws into relief the gap or incoherence in the existing analysis. See Jacques Derrida,Of Grammatology, tr. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 141–64.
Howe at 430E (our italics). For a discussion of the implications of Howe, see Peter Alldridge, “Duress and Murder in the House of Lords”,Journal of Criminal Law, 52 (1988), 186–201.
Abbott vR [1976] A.C. 755 at 766G-767Aper Lord Salmon. A comparable explosion of anxiety occurred even more improbably inCunningham [1982] A.C. 566; [1982] 2 All E.R. 863. The issue before the House of Lords was the meaning of “malice aforethought”, the mental state required for conviction for murder. The less restrictive definition (for which their Lordships opted) was “intention to kill or cause serious bodily harm.” The more restrictive definition was “intention to kill or cause harm likely to endanger life.” So the question was whether someone who killed by an action performed while intending serious bodily harm, but not harm likely to endanger life, should be guilty of murder or manslaughter: I confess I view with a certain scepticism the opinion ... that the age of our ancestors was so much more violent than our own that we can afford to take a different view of “concepts of what is right and what is wrong that command general acceptance in contemporary society”. In the weeks preceding that in which this appeal came before your Lordships' House both the Pope and the President of the United States have been shot in cold blood, a circuit judge has been slain, a police officer has given evidence of the deliberate shooting of himself which has confined him to a wheeled chair for life, five soldiers have been blown up on a country road by a mine containing over a thousand pounds of high explosive, the pillion passenger has been torn from the back of a motor bicycle and stabbed to death by total strangers apparently because he was white, and another youth stabbed, perhaps because he was black, petrol bombs and anti-personnel weapons have been thrown in the streets of Belfast and London at the bodies of the security forces, cars have been overturned and set on fire in the streets of Bristol, and the press has carried reports that our Sovereign moves about the streets of her country protected by bodyguards with automatic weapons. If I moved a few months back I could cite the siege of the Iranian embassy and other terrorist sieges where hostages have been taken by armed men, the shooting in the streets of London of foreign refugees at the hand of their political opponents, and many other acts of lawlessness, violence and cruelty. [1982] A.C. at 579H-580C; [1982] 2 All E.R. 869g-i. The boundaries of right and wrong were not at issue in the discussion of the distinction between murder and manslaughter, both of which are “wrong” in the eyes of the law. And it is unlikely that any change in the definition of murder would have any effect on the frequency of incidents like those cited.
For a discussion of the political construction of terrorism see Philip A. Thomas and Tony Standley, “Classifying Terrorism”,Terrorism and National Liberation, ed. H. Köchler (Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 1988), 67–78. An extended version of this paper is to appear in theAustralian Journal of Law and Society.
J.C. Smith and B. Hogan,Criminal Law, 5th edition (London: Butterworth, 1983), 210.
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Alldridge, P., Belsey, C. Murder Under Duress: Terrorism And The Criminal Law. Int J Semiot Law 2, 223–246 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02047487
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02047487