Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongs Comparative Liability in Criminal Law [Hardcover]

Don't blame the victim is a cornerstone maxim of Anglo-American jurisprudence, but should the law generally ignore a victim's behavior in determining a defendant's liability?Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongscriticizes the current criminal law approach and outlines a more fair, coherent, and efficient set of rules to recognize that victims sometimes co-author their own losses or injuries.Evaluating a number of controversial cases involving euthanasia, sadomasochism, date rape, battered wives, and innocent aggressors, Vera Bergelson builds a theoretical foundation for reform. Her approach to comparative criminal liability takes into account the actions of both the perpetrator and the victim and offers a unitary explanation for consent, self-defense, and provocation. This innovative book supplies a practical and coherent mechanism for evaluating the impact of a victim's conduct on a perpetrator's liability in a variety of circumstances, including those that are now artificially excluded from comparative analysis. This book boldly challenges the entrenched conviction that the perpetrator's liability does not depend on the conduct of the victim. It's time we rethink this conviction, and Bergelson succeeds in providing a vision of rights that explains existing criminal law doctrines and exposes the difficulties of alternative theories. Bergelson, the author of many articles on victims' rights, is well qualified to prepare this book, which calls for reform of laws dealing with criminal liability.... The arguments are cogent and easy to follow, and the book includes an excellent bibliography and a useful index. Her thesis raises a number of interesting and important questions. . .Bergelson develops these ideas with a clear eye for a good argument, and an impressive breadth of engagement. Victims' Rights and Victims' Wrongsoffers a provocative argument in favor of a new defense in criminal law that acknowledges and weighs a victim's behavior in determinilÓ(