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Summary Criminal Law Notes - Actus Reus
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Criminal Law Notes - Actus Reus
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CRIMINAL LAW NOTES – ACTUS REUSActus Reus
- Requires an Act – positive act or an omission – there is no general duty to act, as you
only have a duty to act in certain circumstances (i.e. for your child)
- If you breach the duty, that would be your act – if you did not act for your child and they
ended up dying, you would be done for manslaughter
- Your duty would be that you have to do what is reasonable in the circumstances – if you
saw a fire, your duty would be to ring the fire brigade and not jump in – if you just walked
past and did nothing, that would be your OMISSION
- In France, you are under duty to rescue endangered people, as long as it does not put
your own life at risk – the Princess Diana case is a good one here, as French
photographers were found criminally liable as they should have acted and tried to help
- The question is: Should English law change? Should there be a general duty to act?
- The arguments in favour is very simple – it is immoral to watch a stranger die so
therefore you should have a general duty to act – there should be a close link between
morality and the criminal law – if something is immoral then it should be a candidate for
criminalisation – we are all members of the society so therefore we should have a duty to
act to care for each other – Fineberg said that we are all “neighbours” so therefore we
should care for one another (owe a duty to your neighbour)
- The argument against is about autonomy – we are all autonomous beings and we live in
a society that respects freedom – freedom should only be restricted where it is
necessary and stops people from causing harm to others – criminal law punishes
people’s choices – if you have a general duty to act, criminal liability would be governed
by CHANCE – the criminal law should only intervene when an individual CHOOSES to
act in a certain way
- Another argument against is that you only have a duty to someone if they have a right –
if someone has no right to be rescued by a stranger, there is no duty imposed on the
stranger – this goes back to the fact that a child has a right to be rescued by a relative so
they have a duty – “it is worse to walk past and watch someone drown, than drown them
yourself”
- If you all have a general duty to act, what do you do when there are more than one
person watching someone drown for example? Do you bring criminal liability against
them all? How long do you have to be around and what actions do you need to carry
out? How much danger do you put yourself in? You could go on to exacerbate the
situation and make it worse – the law is counterproductive in that most people would
rescue someone, but you might avoid going to certain places if you know you are going
to be criminally liable if you do not act – the word “reasonable” should be taken into
account as you should only act as much as a “reasonable man” would
- In France, the way they do things is they do not let an omission amount to ulterior
homicide – they have come up with a special offence for this lack of action – it has a
much lesser punishment than homicide
- For what purpose would you want a general duty to act?
Surrounding Circumstances
- Causing death by dangerous driving (Road Traffic Act 1988, s.1) – the surrounding
circumstance is that it must be on a public road – cannot happen on roads that are not
open to the public (i.e. private)
- Bigamy – this can obviously only be committed when you are already married – this is a
very rare criminal offence due to the surrounding circumstances
Result
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