Law

A groundbreaking analysis of the relationship between politics, policies, and criminalization.

This anthology scrutinizes the impact of law, society, politics, and penal populism on criminalization across legal systems, advocating for a reassessment of criminal law's scope. Criminalization delves into the prevalence of resorting to criminalization for social issues, urging for a critical review. Additionally, the book examines the normative foundations of criminalization, addressing 'over'-criminalization and exploring its empirical and normative aspects. The contributors also consider the roles of prosecutorial and judicial discretion, as well as State preventive powers, in over-criminalization. 

Any reader—whether scholar, policymaker, or citizen—will gain insights into the expansion of criminal laws and their consequences, making it a valuable resource for understanding the dynamics of law, politics, and power in criminal justice.

Contributors include: Naveed Mehmood, Chirag Balyan, Shruti Bedi, Shubhangni Jain, Charles Khamala, Sébastien Lafrance, Sidharth Luthra, David McCallum, Garima Pal, Daria Ponomareva, Alok Prasanna, Yogesh Pratap Singh, and Ekkehard Strauss.

The second of two volumes, Criminalization: Where Do We Go from Here embarks on an exploration of the historical roots of over-criminalization.

The authors trace its origins back to ancient legal systems and societal norms, elucidating the evolution of the legal framework alongside shifting attitudes and policy decisions. The chapters shed light on the socio-cultural forces that have contributed to the proliferation of criminal laws, resulting in a state of over-criminalization in contemporary society, supported by empirical analysis.

In The Corporation, Law and Capitalism, Grietje Baars offers a radical Marxist perspective on the role of law in the global political economy. Closing a major gap in historical-materialist scholarship, Baars demonstrates how the corporation, capitalism 's main engine from city-state and colonial times to the present multinational, is a masterpiece of legal technology. The symbiosis between law and capital becomes acutely apparent in the question of 'corporate accountability '. Baars provides a detailed analysis of corporate human rights and war crimes trials, from the Nuremberg industrialists ' trials to current efforts. The book shows that precisely because of law 's relationship to capital, law cannot prevent or remedy the 'externalities ' produced by corporate capitalism. This realisation will generate the space required to formulate a different answer to 'the question of the corporation ', and to global corporate capitalism more broadly, outside of the law.

In Lawfare: The Criminalization of Democratic Politics in the Global South, Zaffaroni, Caamaño and Vegh Weis offer an account of the misuse of the law to criminalize progressive political leaders in Latin America.

Indeed, more and more popular political leaders in the region are being imprisoned or prosecuted, even while in power. Inacio Lula da Silva is the quintaessential case of this worrying process. Despite the centrality of this juridical-political phenomenon in Latin America, it is little known to the Anglo-Saxon public. This book aims to fill this gap. In an accessible style, the authors deconstruct the legal language and the main problematics of lawfare, drawing attention to the fact that it may end up destroying the rule of law in order to promote the most cruel forms of neoliberalism.

Featuring a foreword by Lula da Silva.