Primacy

• What are the three reasons that the law of crimes allows for citizen's liberty through the goodness of criminal law?

  1. No body of law, public or private, is more dreadful in its effects.
  2. This is the only area of the law in which the state is so often tempted to violate the commandments of liberal political morality.
  3. This area of our law illuminates the relationship between state and citizens and raises legal and political questions about the reach of individual freedom and state power.
• What is meant when criminal law is more dreadful in its effects?

  Criminal proceedings in its process and effect makes us vulnerable, in body and mind, to the coercive power of the state compared to our other laws.
• Why is it believed that criminal law is the one type of law that is a threat to limited government as the state is seemingly tempted to violate liberal political morality?

  When conduct is improperly criminalised, the result is: citizens' autonomy become the object of state criminal supervision – the sense of security that individuals govern themselves become weakened.