"Interesting, well-argued, and provocative. [Dubber] raises new and important issues about the role and impact of the victimsa rights movement."
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

"Dubber's book is an outstanding achievement: original and insightful, well-written and well-informed, deeply humane and at times even passionate. It deserves to have a significant impact not only on the way criminal justice is thought about by scholars, but also on the wider public policy debate."
--"Criminal Law Forum"

"Dubber gives some powerful examples of how the law has developed haphazardly in response to individual victims' experiences."
-- "The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice"

"Victims in the War on Crime includes a valuable review of the development of victims' rights and the war on crime and an interesting link of the two movements that have occurred in the same place and time."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

"Dubber pulls off quite an intellectual feat. First, he offers a ruthless expose on the so-called Victim's Rights movement. Then he shows how the War on Crime, in which victims are enlisted, has little to do with real human victims in the first place. Where, he asks, are the victims in the vast array of possession offenses that are the heart of the War on Crime? He ends by conceiving what a legal system would look like if we were truly interested in victims as persons, not as pawns. This is a bold work of jurisprudence and also a practical blueprint for better policy--one of the most original books on criminal law in recent years."
--Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law, Stanford University

"Dubber has written a long overdue andgroundbreaking analysis of the use and abuse of victims' rights to further the aims of a police state. . . . Highly recommended."
--"Choice"

Two phenomena have shaped American criminal law for the past thirty years: the war on crime and the victims' rights movement. As incapacitation has replaced rehabilitation as the dominant ideology of punishment, reflecting a shift from an identification with defendants to an identification with victims, the war on crime has victimized offenders and victims alike. What we need instead, Dubber argues, is a system which adequately recognizes both victims and defendants as persons.

"Victims in the War on Crime" is the first book to provide a critical analysis of the role of victims in the criminal justice system as a whole. It also breaks new ground in focusing not only on the victims of crime, but also on those of the war on victimless crime. After first offering an original critique of the American penal system in the age of the crime war, Dubber undertakes an incisive comparative reading of American criminal law and the law of crime victim compensation, culminating in a wide-ranging revision that takes victims seriously, and offenders as well.

Dubber here salvages the project of vindicating victims' rights for its own sake, rather than as a weapon in the war against criminals. Uncovering the legitimate core of the victims' rights movement from underneath existing layers of bellicose rhetoric, he demonstrates how victims' rights can help us build a system of American criminal justice after the frenzy of the war on crime has died down.

Mention the phrase Homeland Security and heated debates emerge about state uses and abuses of legal authority. This timely book is a comprehensive treatise on the constitutional and legal history behind the power of the modern state to police its citizens.

Dubber explores the roots of the power to police -- the most expansive and least limitable of governmental powers -- by focusing on its most obvious and problematic manifestation: criminal law. He argues that the defining characteristics of this power, including the inability to accurately define it, reflect its origins in the discretionary and virtually limitless patriarchal power of the householder over his household. The paradox of patriarchal police power as the most troubling yet least scrutinized of governmental powers can begin to be resolved by subjecting this branch of government to the critical analysis it merits. Dubber shows us that the question must become how can the police power and criminal law together serve the goals of social equity that define and give direction to contemporary democratic societies? This book goes to the heart of this neglected but crucial topic.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"One cannot expect Dubber to solve all the worldas problems in one small book. Yet it certainly provides a beginning for what could be enlightening investigations into justice. "
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

"Working with sources that span centuries, nations, and fields of thought, Dubber combines intellectual history with jurisprudential critique. . . . An important contribution not just to legal knowledge but to legal wisdom by suggesting the challenges and possibilities of reconciling the two sides of law's personality: rules and intuition, reason and emotion."
--Samuel H. Pillsbury, author of "Judging Evil: Rethinking the Law of Murder and Manslaughter"

"Dubber's book is a considerable achievement: lucid, nuanced and a pleasure to read."
--Susan Bandes, editor of "The Passions of Law"

"This is a timely, important and inspiring book. We live in a time when the rhetoric of war comes all too easily to the mouths and minds of penal policy-makers and politicians: we have the war against crime, the war against drugs, the war against terror; and offenders, those against whom such 'wars' are fought, are then liable to be portrayed as the enemy--as outsiders whom we need not or cannot recognise as fellows. Dubber offers a powerful corrective to such moral myopia: the sense of justice, as 'the ability and willingness to recognize others as equal and rational persons and treat them as such.' Drawing on history, on law, philosophy and psychology, on a wide range of materials from both Europe and the United States, Dubber develops an account of the sense of justice as a matter of sense, or sensibility, rather than ofabstract reason; but also as a matter of justice, rather than of more partial or limited empathy--a sense of justice that recognizes our moral fellowship with other human beings as moral agents. He goes on to show what a central role such an idea could play in structuring a decent system of criminal law--and thus in helping to motivate some of the profound reforms that our existing systems so urgently need."
--R. A. Duff, author of "Punishment, Communication, and Community"

In The Sense of Justice, distinguished legal author Markus Dirk Dubber undertakes a critical analysis of the "sense of justice": an overused, yet curiously understudied, concept in modern legal and political discourse. Courts cite it, scholars measure it, presidential candidates prize it, eulogists praise it, criminals lack it, and commentators bemoan its loss in times of war. But what is it? Often, the sense of justice is dismissed as little more than an emotional impulse that is out of place in a criminal justice system based on abstract legal and political norms equally applied to all.

Dubber argues against simple categorization of the sense of justice. Drawing on recent work in moral philosophy, political theory, and linguistics, Dubber defines the sense of justice in terms of empathy--the emotional capacity that makes law possible by giving us vicarious access to the experiences of others. From there, he explores the way it is invoked, considered, and used in the American criminal justice system. He argues that this sense is more than an irrational emotional impulse but a valuable legal tool that should be properly used and understood.

"Interesting, well-argued, and provocative. [Dubber] raises new and important issues about the role and impact of the victimsa rights movement."
--"Law and Politics Book Review"

"Dubber's book is an outstanding achievement: original and insightful, well-written and well-informed, deeply humane and at times even passionate. It deserves to have a significant impact not only on the way criminal justice is thought about by scholars, but also on the wider public policy debate."
--"Criminal Law Forum"

"Dubber gives some powerful examples of how the law has developed haphazardly in response to individual victims' experiences."
-- "The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice"

"Victims in the War on Crime includes a valuable review of the development of victims' rights and the war on crime and an interesting link of the two movements that have occurred in the same place and time."
--"Contemporary Sociology"

"Dubber pulls off quite an intellectual feat. First, he offers a ruthless expose on the so-called Victim's Rights movement. Then he shows how the War on Crime, in which victims are enlisted, has little to do with real human victims in the first place. Where, he asks, are the victims in the vast array of possession offenses that are the heart of the War on Crime? He ends by conceiving what a legal system would look like if we were truly interested in victims as persons, not as pawns. This is a bold work of jurisprudence and also a practical blueprint for better policy--one of the most original books on criminal law in recent years."
--Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law, Stanford University

"Dubber has written a long overdue andgroundbreaking analysis of the use and abuse of victims' rights to further the aims of a police state. . . . Highly recommended."
--"Choice"

Two phenomena have shaped American criminal law for the past thirty years: the war on crime and the victims' rights movement. As incapacitation has replaced rehabilitation as the dominant ideology of punishment, reflecting a shift from an identification with defendants to an identification with victims, the war on crime has victimized offenders and victims alike. What we need instead, Dubber argues, is a system which adequately recognizes both victims and defendants as persons.

"Victims in the War on Crime" is the first book to provide a critical analysis of the role of victims in the criminal justice system as a whole. It also breaks new ground in focusing not only on the victims of crime, but also on those of the war on victimless crime. After first offering an original critique of the American penal system in the age of the crime war, Dubber undertakes an incisive comparative reading of American criminal law and the law of crime victim compensation, culminating in a wide-ranging revision that takes victims seriously, and offenders as well.

Dubber here salvages the project of vindicating victims' rights for its own sake, rather than as a weapon in the war against criminals. Uncovering the legitimate core of the victims' rights movement from underneath existing layers of bellicose rhetoric, he demonstrates how victims' rights can help us build a system of American criminal justice after the frenzy of the war on crime has died down.

Mention the phrase Homeland Security and heated debates emerge about state uses and abuses of legal authority. This timely book is a comprehensive treatise on the constitutional and legal history behind the power of the modern state to police its citizens.

Dubber explores the roots of the power to police -- the most expansive and least limitable of governmental powers -- by focusing on its most obvious and problematic manifestation: criminal law. He argues that the defining characteristics of this power, including the inability to accurately define it, reflect its origins in the discretionary and virtually limitless patriarchal power of the householder over his household. The paradox of patriarchal police power as the most troubling yet least scrutinized of governmental powers can begin to be resolved by subjecting this branch of government to the critical analysis it merits. Dubber shows us that the question must become how can the police power and criminal law together serve the goals of social equity that define and give direction to contemporary democratic societies? This book goes to the heart of this neglected but crucial topic.