Professor Antony Duff

Emeritus Professor

Philosophy University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Antony Duff

Contact details

About me

I joined the Department in 1970, after graduate work at Oxford, and a year at the University of Washington, Seattle. I retired formally in 2009, but retain close connections with the Department as a Professor Emeritus. From 2010 to 2015 I also held a part-time position in the Law School at the University of Minnesota. Professional Activities Founding Co-Editor, Criminal Law and Philosophy; Founding Co-Director, Robina Institute for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, University of Minnesota Law School; Associate, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research; Honorary Professor, University of Edinburgh Law School Outside Activities Board member, Howard League Scotland; Patron, Philosophy in Prison. From 2011-2014 I chaired a British Academy Working Group on the use of imprisonment: our report, A Presumption Against Imprisonment, was published in 2014.

I work mainly on the philosophy of criminal law - in particular on the philosophy of punishment, on issues that connect philosophy of action with the basic principles of criminal liability, on criminalisation, and on the moral and political preconditions of criminal liability. From 2008-2012 I led a four-year AHRC-funded project on Criminalization with four colleagues (Sandra Marshall of this Department, Lindsay Farmer of Glasgow Law School, Victor Tadros of Warwick Law School, and Massimo Renzo of York Law School): the project has produced a seven volume mini-series published by Oxford University Press—four volumes of papers from conferences and workshops (The Boundaries of the Criminal Law, 2010; The Structures of the Criminal Law, 2011; The Constitution of the Criminal Law, 2012; The Grounds of Criminalization, 2013) and monographs from three of the researchers. My current work focuses on the political theorisation of criminal law: on issues concerning the role of criminal law in a democratic polity, the ways in which citizens can or should relate to the criminal law, the political preconditions of criminal law's legitimacy, and the implications of the failure of those preconditions. I also contribute to two AHRC-funded research projects: Norms for the New Public Sphere (PI Rowan Cruft), and Varieties of Risk (PI Philip Ebert). Papers currently in progress or forthcoming include 'What's Wrong With Vigilantism?'; 'Proportionality and the Criminal Law'; ‘Purgative Punishment and the Importance of Perspective’; ‘Legal Obligation and the Criminal Law'; ‘Searching for Criminal Responsibility'; ‘Crimes of Endangerment’; ‘Beccaria’s Contractarian Criminal Law'; ‘Character and Propensities: Some (Mis)uses of Statistics in Criminal Trials’; ‘Justice in Criminal Trials’; ‘Offenders as Citizens’; 'De Minimis and the Structure of the Criminal Trial'; 'State Responsibility: An Outsider’s View'.

Professional Career

D. Juris (ho notary), University of Oslo

Doctor of Law (honorary)., University of Edinburgh

Fellow of the British Academy

Fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh