Provocation and Responsibility

Little has been written by lawyers about the effect of provocation on culpability for homicide in English law, yet the question of what our moral attitudes should be towards someone who kills or injures another in anger has been a source of lively debate for centuries. The first philosophical inquiry into the moral character of actions in anger, it seeks to resolve the philosophical controversies generated by setting them in the context of an examination of the place of anger in human nature throughout history. A previously unexplored area of research, this work breaks new ground in its use of historical and philosophical sources not normally linked with criminal law, providing a colorful and fascinating history of the plea of provocation as a defense to murder in England.