The traditional Scottish criminal law model from the Far-Eastern perspective

Abstract

The traditional Scottish criminal law model was a bold attempt to build the system of criminal law on the Christian foundations combined with the universal principles of reason that go beyond the narrow national, cultural, and religious traditions of a particular country. Scottish criminal law grew out of the Enlightenment which attempted to establish criminal law on common sense, to make it intelligible and useful. The spirit of the Scottish legal philosophy is egalitarian. The knowledge of law must be accessible to everyone. These ideas challenge the practices of many countries in the East where law is perceived as a complex set of rules known only to a narrow circle of experts, whereas people have little role to play but obey those rules, often without understanding them or even knowing them. The Scottish ideas of criminal law can serve as a platform for a critical examination of the criminal law in such diverse countries like Thailand and China. The attractive feature of the Scottish Enlightenment for those countries is its pragmatism. At the same time, it resists the excessiveness of the governmental control by the means of criminal law that can threaten the wellbeing of people. The idea of crime as a moral vice that offends public sentiment effectively limits the oppressive expansion of criminal law in the Far East.