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Distributed for University of British Columbia Press

Negotiating Responsibility

Law, Murder, and States of Mind

Kimberly White examines how the idea of criminal responsibility was produced, organized, and legitimized in and through institutional structures such as remissions, trial, and post-trial procedures; identity politics of race, character, citizenship, and gender; and overlapping narratives of mind-state and capacity. She points to the subtle but deeply influential ways in which common sense about crime, punishment, criminality, and human nature shaped the boundaries of expert knowledge at every stage of the judicial process. Negotiating Responsibility  provides an essential point of reference from which to evaluate current criminal law practices and law reform initiatives in Canada.


200 pages | © 2007

Law and Society


Table of Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

2 The Making and Mapping of Capital Murder Case Files

3 Criminological Thinking and Ways of “Knowing” the Criminal

4 Negotiating Responsibility in Law’s “Marketplace”: Beyond the Insanity Defence

5 The Racialization of Criminal Responsibility

6 Murder between “Wives” and “Husbands”

7 Concluding Thoughts

Appendices

Notes

Bibliography

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