TY - JOUR
AU1 - Smith, J. C.
AB - J. C. SMITH . . even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked," said Oliver Wendell Holmes J. 1 Intentional and negligent wrongs are so different in moral quality and so different in the reaction which they cause in those wronged and in those who see or hear of them, that any system of criminal law is bound to take account of the distinction. Lady Wootton 2 has recently argued that courts should confine themselves to deciding whether the accused person caused the proscribed harm; but she recognises that no action could rationally be taken against the " convicted " person until the " sentence " (though Lady Wootton would not call him that) had determined the state of mind with which he perpetrated the harm. The inquiry would not be avoided but merely postponed and put into other hands. From an early stage 3 of our legal history the law has distinguished between inten- tional and other wrongs, and any rational and civilised criminal law must so distinguish. Whatever the difficulties involved in looking into another person's mind, it is a task which must be undertaken if we are to have a system of criminal 
TI - Intention in Criminal Law
JF - Current Legal Problems
DO - 10.1093/clp/27.1.93
DA - 1974-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/intention-in-criminal-law-0vXqhSeXjx
SP - 93
EP - 121
VL - 27
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -