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Basic Concepts of Criminal Law
By George P. Fletcher. Oxford University Press, 223 pp.
The aim of this book is to introduce the reader to criminal law by referring to principles that generate the deep structure of all systems of criminal law. It was originally written to help Russian law students to grasp the ideas of Western ways of thinking about criminal law in the post-Communist era and the fact that Fletcher addresses his book to students of law might explain why a nonlawyer at times feels that the content is going beyond what one would refer to as basic.
Fletcher's thesis is that there is much greater unity among the diverse systems of criminal justice than commonly realized. He identifies a set of twelve dichotomous distinctions that exist in all legal cultures and dedicates one chapter to each of...