Harm, Wrong, And The Limits Of Criminalization: A Critical Examination Of A.P. Simester And Andreas Von Hirsch's Conception Of The Harm Principle
- IJLLR Journal
- 4 hours ago
- 1 min read
Ajay Jatav, National Law University, Delhi
ABSTRACT
This article examines comprehensive and criticality of the harm principle as reconceived by A.P. Simester and Andreas von Hirsch in their seminal work, Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs: On the Principles of Criminalisation (2011). Moving beyond John Stuart Mill's foundational but under-specified formulation, Simester and von Hirsch erect a normatively sophisticated framework that demands both harmfulness and wrongfulness as cumulative prerequisites for justified criminal sanction. The article articulates the authors' principal arguments including the tripartite wrongfulness theses, the taxonomy of harm, and the doctrine of fair imputation and subjects each to rigorous critical scrutiny. Drawing on the counter-arguments of Victor Tadros, R.A. Duff, Douglas Husak, Tatjana Hornle, and Vincent Chiao, the article identifies structural tensions within the framework, most notably the ambiguous logical relationship between harm and wrong, the indeterminacy inherent in the fair imputation standard, and the framework's limited purchase over systemic and collective harms. The article further situates the analysis within contemporary Indian criminal law reform, demonstrating the practical salience of the theoretical debates.
Keywords: Harm, Wrongs, Criminalization, Liberty limiting principle, Harm to others.
