ABSTRACT
The anti-codification environment cannot be explained through any political reluctance to explore the utility of the penal sanction. Quite the contrary! We live in an age where, at least up until the cost-benefit critique on government in the wake of the global financial collapse, the industries of criminal justice such as surveillance and risk assessment are flourishing under an aggressive political sponsorship and a punitive popular wisdom. Parliaments and their bureaucracies spend more time legislating and institutionalising the penal sanction than any other regulatory form at their disposal. Bob Sullivan critiques the burgeoning of a prophylactic criminal law through a radical reliance on strict liability offences and civil sanctions that short-circuit even the most meagre remaining protections of criminal justice due process. Macaulay achieved what centuries of legislative and judicial intervention have unravelled. Perhaps the worry for codification advocates exists in the project itself. Macaulay's draft Code is adept, carefully theorised, consistent, and liberal in the true sense.
