Intention in the Criminal Law—A Rejoinder
Nicola Lacey's article in this Journal, 'A Clear Concept of Intention: Elusive or Illusory?'l tackles a breathtaking array of themes that are of central concern to criminal law scholars. We are treated to a sophisticated analysis of a House of Lords decision on the meaning of intention in the law of murder,2 an evaluation of the contributions of descriptive and reductive scepticism to criminal law scholarship,3 a critical assault on conceptual and 'ordinary language' analysis of criminal law concepts,4 and some thoughts on the implications of the argument for the study of criminal law issues (not just 'criminal law') in the curriculum.S It would be impossible to do justice to all of her arguments in a single rejoinder. So, I want to concentrate on a narrow, but important issue. I want to show that Lacey's assumptions about the role, if not the concept, of intention in the criminal law rest on a mistake. This is significant because, unless one understands the different roles that intention plays in the criminal law, one will not fully understand why the meaning of intention the conception of the concept-may differ according to the role it is playing in a particular context. Then, by reinterpreting Moloney6 in the light of the role intention is playing in that context, I hope to cast doubt on her claim to have shown, through an analysis of intention in the criminal law, that one must have 'a criminal law enterprise which dispenses with ... the boundaries between criminal law and criminal justice, and which addresses criminal justice issues explicitly within a particular social and political context.'7