ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical analysis of Crime, Reason and History: A Critical Introduction to Criminal Law by Alan Norrie. It argues that this book constitutes a leading work because it helped create space for critical interpretations of criminal law and articulated, in a largely compelling manner, some of the contradictions that lie at the heart of liberal criminal law. Beyond this, the chapter argues that each of the three editions of the book illustrates the different kinds of contribution critical legal scholarship might make: exposing ideology (identifying conflict), deploying liberalism’s contradictions to secure purportedly legitimate progressive outcomes (mediating conflict) and embracing a morally substantive social vision whose realisation might depend upon legal intervention (transcending conflict).
