The General/Special Distinction in Criminal Law, Tort Law and Legal Theory

Abstract

1953 saw the publication of a major work by Glanville Williams entitled Criminal Law: The General Part. The book’s title alluded to a distinction – which Williams attributed to civil law systems – between the general and special parts of the criminal law. The author’s declared motivation in adopting this distinction was practical: in the case of many crimes, the statutory provisions creating them have not, he observed, been the subject of judicial consideration. But there are certain general principles that apply to all crimes, an understanding of which would be useful to the practitioner confronted with a statutory provision as yet devoid of judicial interpretation. The topics covered in the book included mental states, attempts, the ‘principle of legality’, corporations, burden of proof, and so on. Various theorists of the criminal law have subsequently developed sophisticated ‘philosophical’ accounts of the general/ special distinction. In recent years it has attracted more and more attention to the point where it has been the subject of two substantial volumes of essays by leading scholars, one on the general part and another on the special part.