STORRE

1.1. This Bill is a watershed moment for human rights in Scotland. It will reform the existing framework for the benefit of children living here by creating a statutory framework designed to enhance access to rights under the provisions of the UNCRC in so far as it is possible to do so within devolved competence. It is innovative in nature and ground breaking in terms of devolved legislation in the UK in seeking a maximalist approach to human rights protection in accordance with international...

This chapter explores the role that criminal law might play in combating “hatred,” in particular whether and why we might appropriately criminalize “hatred.” After sketching some salient features of a liberal, democratic republic (as the kind of polity in which we can aspire to live, and whose citizens can be expected to be committed to combating “hatred”), we explain why a certain kind of “hatred” should concern members of such a polity, as a distinctive civic vice manifested in a distinctiv...

This chapter argues that in a democratic republic of free and equal citizens, criminal punishment can be adequately justified only if it can be portrayed as a civic duty that offenders ought to undertake. The authors sketch the key features of such a democratic republic, and of the kind of criminal law to which its members can properly subject themselves and each other. A crucial aspect of such a criminal law is that citizens have active roles to play in its enterprise, including the roles of...

First paragraph: What kind of practice of prosecution is appropriate to a democratic polity’s criminal law? What should the role of prosecutor be in such a system of criminal law? Such questions beg important prior questions: they assume that democratic polities would not only maintain distinctive systems of criminal law, but would so structure the criminal law as to have a recognisable role of ‘prosecutor’. To justify such assumptions, we would need an account of democracy, of the kind of cr...