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Volume 40 - Issue 2 - November 1981

Contents

Page 1 of 3

Case and Comment

Articles

  • Recklessness Redefined

  • Glanville Williams
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    16 January 2009, pp. 252-283

  • The decisions of the House of Lords in Caldwell and Stephen Lawrence can be read in widely differing ways. Taken at their face they are a slap-happy repudiation of the concept of recklessness that has been carefully developed in the last few years, going back to the notion that recklessness includes inadvertent negligence and working a profoundly regrettable change in the criminal law. If, on the other hand, each decision is interpreted in the light of its facts, with a sentence from one of the less conspicuous parts of Caldwell transferred to one that is thrust more prominently upon our attention, and if, as the result of this, the expressed ratio decidendi in each case is materially rewritten, they can be seen as imposing acceptable restrictions upon the requirement of a mental element in crime.

Page 1 of 3