The definitive article

Professors teach, and scholars theorize, something called 'the' criminal law. A new book by Lindsay Farmer is ostensibly about criminal laws in England over the past two centuries, but it shows that in that place and time there developed a concept of criminal law as a singular, cohesive, and enduring institution that can and should be theorized independently of any particular jurisdiction, statute, case, or code. The grip of this concept is powerful, this review essay argues. This way of thinking about criminal law now spans national borders-and it creates significant obstacles to penal reform in the United States and elsewhere. This review essay focuses on two implications of the modern understanding of 'the' criminal law: the claim that criminal law has some extra-legal nature, core, or essence and the conceptual divide between substance and procedure.