The criminal law group delivers teaching for the first year of the LLB undergraduate degree, and for optional courses on both the LLB and the LLM. Members of the group conduct research and supervise work on a wide range of issues in criminal law, including general criminal law theory, punishment theory, corporate crime, policing, criminal law and social disadvantage, legal history. The group organises a lively Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Theory Forum at which scholars are invited three times per term to discuss and debate their ideas with interested scholars and students.
Nicola Lacey is School Professor of Law, Gender and Social Policy. From 1998 to 2010 she held a Chair in Criminal Law and Legal Theory at LSE; she returned to LSE in 2013 after spending three years as Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, and Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Oxford. Niki's main research is in criminal law and criminal justice, with a particular focus on comparative and historical scholarship. Over the last few years, she has been working on the development of ideas of criminal responsibility in England since the 18th Century, and on the comparative political economy of punishment. Her recent work includes: LSE Gender Institute/Knowledge Exchange HEIF5 Confronting Gender Inequality: Findings from the LSE Commission on Gender, Inequality and Power (2015; updated version published with further public event 2017) (Co-directed with Diane Perrons: author of Law section and co-author of introduction).
Jeremy Horder works on general criminal law theory, criminal law history, corporate crime, and election law. His recent book publications include Ashworth’s Principles of Criminal Law, (Oxford: 10th edition 2022), Criminal Fraud and Election Disinformation: Law and Politics (Oxford, 2022) and Criminal Misconduct in Office: Law and Politics (Oxford 2018). Jeremy teaches criminal law on the LLB and corporate crime on the LLM. He supervises students in the areas of general criminal law theory and corporate crime.
Peter Ramsay works on the political sociology of criminal law and has written on the relation of criminal law, punishment and democracy, pre-emptive offences and incapacitation, and the construction of the vulnerable legal subject. He is currently writing about the English criminal law as a branch of public law. He supervises students in criminal law theory, punishment theory and criminal justice. He is the co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy after Brexit (Poity, 2023), and The Insecurity State: Vulnerable Autonomy and the Right to Security in the Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Roxana Willis investigates the legal system through the prism of structural inequality, with a focus on class and race. Roxana’s first monograph, A Precarious Life: Community and Conflict in a DeIndustrialised Town (Oxford 2023) presents a long-term ‘ethnography at home’ on a disadvantaged housing estate in England. completed a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Junior Research Fellowship at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, and a Stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship in Law at University College, Oxford. She holds an LLB in Law with European Legal Studies from the University of Kent and Charles University, Prague; an LLM in International Economic Law from SOAS, London; and a DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford.
Abenaa Owusu-Bempah works on criminal law, justice, procedure and evidence. Her work on fair trial rights, participation in criminal proceedings, hate crime, and use of racialised evidence, engages with the scope and application of substantive criminal law. Abenaa convenes the criminal law course on the LLB.
Richard Martin’s research examines various aspects of criminal law and the criminal process. Most recently, he has written on the expansion of public order offences and police powers as they relate to peaceful protest, and the use-of-force standards that governs police professional misconduct. Richard teaches criminal law on the LLB.