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Course Outline PCLCI LLM 2023 - MR

The course provides an overview of principles of criminal law and contemporary issues for postgraduate students. It will help students understand criminal law concepts and analyze principles, reflect on contemporary problems, and critically assess policies. Topics are drawn from general principles and specific offenses. The course aims to equip students with the ability to identify and analyze principles, advance issues, and critically assess policies relating to criminal law.

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67 views5 pages

Course Outline PCLCI LLM 2023 - MR

The course provides an overview of principles of criminal law and contemporary issues for postgraduate students. It will help students understand criminal law concepts and analyze principles, reflect on contemporary problems, and critically assess policies. Topics are drawn from general principles and specific offenses. The course aims to equip students with the ability to identify and analyze principles, advance issues, and critically assess policies relating to criminal law.

Uploaded by

tishya.saran23
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Course Outline: Principles of Criminal Law and Contemporary Issues

Course Instructor: Dr. Mukul Raizada

Overview: The course on Principles of Criminal Law and Contemporary Issues is designed
for postgraduate students who are already familiar with Indian Penal Code (Substantive
Criminal Law). This course provides students an opportunity to thoroughly understand the
concept of criminal law based on doctrinal and theoretical knowledge. The course will also
help in conceptualising the principles of criminal law contextually and knowing the
contingent nature of the criminal law.

Topics are drawn from both the general principles part of the criminal law and specific
offences. This course strives to equip students with the ability to:

1. Identify, analyse and elucidate the relevant principles in criminal law and advance
issues related to these.
2. reflect upon contemporary issues and problems in criminal law.
3. Critically assess policies and principles relating to the criminal law.

Contents:

Module I: History and evolution of the Western and the Indian Criminal Law Systems
Lecture 1. History and evolution of the English Criminal Law
Lecture 2. History and evolution of the Indian Penal Laws
Lecture 3. Principles and Theories of Criminalization
Lecture 4. The Constitutional Foundations of Criminal Law
Module 2: General Elements of Criminal Liability
Lecture 5. The actus reus: Act, Omissions and Causations
Lecture 6. The men's rea & the culpability principle
Lecture 7. The concurrence requirement
Lecture 8. Strict Criminal Liability: Wootton - Hart debate
Lecture 9. Negative ‘Fault Requirement’.
Module 3: Select Penal Code Offences
Lecture 10. Criminal liability and degree of culpability in-
i) Offences against Human Body
ii) Sexual Offences
Lecture 11. New Dimensions in Culpable Homicide

Module 4: Contemporary Criminal Law Debates


Lecture 12. Disillusionments with the Criminal law in West
Lecture 13. Subjecting Penal Code Offences to the Constitutional touchstone
Lecture 14. Decriminalisation agenda and New Emerging Crimes.

Teaching Method:
Methodology would be discussion based. Classroom discussion will be structured around
lecture, case analysis and readings. The evaluation pattern is designed accordingly. It is
expected that all students will read in advance and participate in the class discussion.

Evaluation Criteria:

End Term Examination: 50 Marks


Project Assignment: 35 Marks (25 Written+10 Presentation)
Response Paper: 10 Marks
Class Participation: 05 Marks

Course Instructor can be contacted at [email protected]


Lecture 1 – 1.09.2023

While substantive law is law that creates rights and liabilities, criminal law deals majorly
deals with the creation of liabilities.
Procedural law –

Evidence law – procedural + substantive

Pillars of criminal law – 1) substantive criminal law/procedural criminal law 2) adjective


criminal law + discretion pillar

Discretionary Pillar or criminal law:-


- Discretion to arrest person given to police (Arnesh Kumar)
- Discretion given to police to file FIR (before Lalita Kumari)

What is crime and how is it different from civil wrong?


- Anything that shakes the conscience of society.
- This might be an outdated definition, because the conscience of society continues to
change.
- Initially, crime was evaluated on the basis of what disturbed the ‘king’s peace”, i.e.,
what activity was disturbing the king’s speech, was a seen as a crime.

Possible criteria to identify an act as a crime.


- The state is majorly concerned with the protection of three individual rights – life,
liberty and property.
- In civil wrongs, rights are violated where both parties have voluntarily formed a
relationship. For eg:- family laws. In criminal law there is no voluntary engagement.

Lecture 04.09.2023

- Law is regulating rules of conduct. It regulates social relationships and the


consequences that emerge out of the social relationships.
- Thus the two things important for law to operate are social relationship and social
consequences. These two are the basic foundation of law and also define the limits of
the law.
- Civil law deals with private rights, which results from social relationships and social
consequences. A peculiar feature of civil law is that it consists of alternate remedies
for the parties.
- Criminal law, on the other hand, is interested in protecting primary social interests,
i.e., life, liberty and property. Thus, where there is infringement of such primary
social interests, criminal law is set in motion. Unlike civil law, in criminal law there
are no alternative remedies. Criminal law compulsorily treats the offender.
Criminal Justice System

- The criminal justice system, which is conventionally seen to be confined to criminal


process or procedure, is not always limited to state machinery alone.
- It also includes:-

A. Penal policy – includes criminal law, criminal procedure and evidence law.
 Penal policy is an instrument through which the volume of harmful conduct within
society is regulated and it also includes within itself the principles by which this
harmful conduct is classed as crime and violators are treated.
 Penal policy would bring regulate what wrongs would constitute criminal wrongs.

B. Criminal Science – includes Criminology, Penology and Victimology


 Criminal science caters to penal policy and vice versa.
 Criminology – the study of crime and criminal behaviour, informed by principles
of sociology and other non-legal fields, including psychology, economics,
statistics, and anthropology.
 Penology – science of punishment
o At a time more than 200 offences were punishable by death in England,
including pick pocketing. Death sentences were executed in public places.
o However, penologists at the time observed that as the public gathered to
witness public executions, people would be pick pocketed during the
execution.
o This demonstrated that death sentences were not having any effect to prevent
offences.
 Victimology – is a branch of criminology.
o First introduced the idea of the role of the victim in occurrence of the crime.
o Also introduced the idea of how some victims are more prone to being
victimised.
o Eventually the discipline also began to study how the crime affects the victim,
rights of the victim (UN Declaration 1985) and how victim is placed within the
criminal justice system.
 Criminal Justice Administration – police, prosecution, courts and correctional
authorities

- Morals:- basic standard of conduct which every member of society must adhere to.
[Hart and Devlin debate]. A violation of societal morals would be called a “deviance”
- Ethics – standard of good and bad, according to the individual. It is a manner of self-
regulation.
- When one violates one’s own standard of good and bad, one commits a sin. A sin is
subjective, according to one’s own ethical standards. A sin is remedied with
repentance.
- A venn diagram where ethics, morals and
- Mala prohibita – not intrinsically wrong but prohibited by law.

Violation of ethics, morals and criminal law


Ethics: Sin
Morals: Deviance
Criminal law: Offence

Reading List

- Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty by Isaiah Berlin (article)


- Craig Haney – Criminality in Context (Chapter 1 – Individualistic myths and the
crime master narrative)
- The idea of liberty – JS Mill (not to be read in too much detail) - to what extent
criminal law affects liberty.

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