A History of the Criminal Law of England: Volume 2

Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-94) published this three-volume account of the English criminal law's historical development in 1883, four years after his appointment as a judge of the High Court. It is a revision and expansion of the second chapter in Stephen's 1863 General View (also reissued in this series). At first sight, it is ironic that the author of this classic of legal historical scholarship was himself a Benthamite who favoured and promoted the codification of the common law and worked on codes of criminal law and procedure for India and for England.

Volume 2 contains a discussion of the limits on criminal jurisdiction in respect of time, person and place; of the history of criminal responsibility; of the different categories of criminal offence (treason, felony and misdemeanour); of inchoate offences (incitements, attempts and conspiracies); and of the history of the offences against the state (treason, seditious words, libels) and offences against religion.

16. Limits of criminal jurisdiction in regard to time, person, and place
17. Of crimes in general and of punishment
18. Criminal responsibility
19. Relation to madness to crime
20. Constituent elements of the substantive criminal law
21. Leading points in the history of the substantive criminal law
22. Of parties to the commission of crimes
23. Offences against the state
24. Seditious offences
25. Offences against religion.