Contents - Faculty of Law - University of Cambridge

13. Parenthood and parental responsibility.14. Private law disputes relating to children.15. Child protection.16. The child in international law.READINGDetailed reading lists are issued during the course. The Squire Law Library and the University’s electronic resourcescover a wealth of international, comparative and national family law materials to which students will be referred, includingthe Commission of European Family Law’s growing series of comparative studies and its recommendations of Europeanprinciples of family law; the International Society of Family Law’s conference proceedings; the annual InternationalSurvey of Family Law; the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family, the journal International Family Law; and arange of national law textbooks and family law journals from several jurisdictions.Students wishing to acquire knowledge of English family law may wish to consult Harris-Short and Miles, Family Law:Text, Cases, and Materials (2007), regularly updated via its companion website:http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199277162/ or Herring, Family Law (4th ed 2009).Shorter works include Douglas, An Introduction to Family Law and/or Probert, Cretney’s Family Law.Other useful texts include:Choudhry and Herring, Human Rights and Family LawHerring, Older People in Law and SocietyKatz, Eekelaar and MacLean (eds), Cross Currents: Family Law and Policy in the US and EnglandKilkelly, The Child and the European Convention on Human RightsScherpe and Yassari (eds), The Legal Status of Cohabitants (a comparative survey)Scherpe (ed), Marital Agreements in Comparative Perspective (forthcoming 2010)PAPER 34. PHILOSOPHY OF CRIMINAL LAWThe course is designed to explore some of the principles and doctrines underlying the criminal law. In particular, it seeksto introduce students to the philosophical (and particularly, ethical) problems that criminal law raises, and to which legalsystems presuppose certain answers. Those answers are variously criticised and defended in the course, and theprincipal aim of the course is to impart a sense of the philosophical complexity of the criminal law, especially whenconsidering two facets central to criminal law:1. The justification for and scope of the criminal sanction and questions of quanta of punishment. Why should criminalpunishment exist? What should be the scope of the criminal law? Should penalties be proportionate to theseriousness of the crime, and why so? How should the gravity of crimes be judged? How does justice inpunishment relate to larger questions of social justice?2. The criteria of criminal liability. A distinctive feature of the criminal law is that a conviction has intrinsic significance:characteristically, it betokens culpability for doing an a prohibited act. If so, we have reason to consider the criteriafor responsibility and blame.This course is taught in seminars and as such it is hoped that to some extent the coverage can be tailored to reflect theinterests of the participants. Likely topics include:109