Justice and the Slaughter Bench

In this follow-up to Alan Norrie’s Law and the Beautiful Soul (Routledge, 2005), Alan Norrie addresses the unresolved split between legal and ethical judgment. This split is seen as a product of the historical shaping of legal judgment, such that its abstraction and formalism both eschew ethical judgment, but also require it. Covering a range of issues – including self defence, euthanasia, and war guilt – this exposition of the problematic relationship between legal and ethical judgment makes an important contribution to the central questions in law and legal theory, as well as criminal justice.