This book presents arguments and proposals for constraining criminalization, with a focus on the legal limits of the criminal law. The book approaches the issue by showing how the moral criteria for constraining unjust criminalization can and has been incorporated into constitutional human rights and thus provides a legal right not to be unfairly criminalized.

Contents: Preface; Unprincipled Criminalization; Taking harm seriously as a criminalization constraint; The limits of remote harm and endangerment criminalization; The harm principle vs. Kantian criteria for ensuring fair criminalization; The moral limits of consent as a defense to criminal harm-doing; The morality of criminalizing conventional wrongs; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Dennis J. Baker (M.Phil., PhD Cantab.) joined the Law School in 2008, leaving the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he had taught Criminal Law and Procedure and Penal Theory on the postgraduate JD programme. He has also taught undergraduate criminal law at the University of Cambridge and Equity and Trusts, Comparative Law and Criminal Law at the University of Western Sydney (Australia).