"100 Years of the Infanticide Act"

100 Years of the Infanticide Act: Legacy, Impact and Future Directions, edited by Karen Brennan and Emma Milne, has been published by Hart/Bloomsbury:

This book provides the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of the Infanticide Act and its impact in England and Wales and around the world.

It is 100 years since an Infanticide Act was first passed in England and Wales. The statute, re-enacted in 1938, allows for leniency to be given to women who kill their infants within the first year of life. This legislation is unique and controversial: it creates a specific offence and defence that is available only to women who kill their biological infants. Men and other carers are not able to avail of the special mitigation provided by the Act, nor are women who kill older children.

The collection brings together leading experts in the field to offer important insights into the history of the law, how it works today, the impact and legacy of the statute and potential futures of infanticide laws around the world.

Contributors consider the Act in practice in England and Wales, the ways it has been portrayed in the British media and justifications for and criticisms of the provision of special treatment for women who kill their infants within a year of birth.

It also looks at the criminal justice responses to infanticide in other jurisdictions, such as Australia, Ireland, Sweden and the United States of America.

--Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.

1. 100 Years of the Infanticide Act: The Law in Context
Karen Brennan (University of Essex UK) and Emma Milne (Durham University, UK)

Part I: The Infanticide Act in Practice

2. Manslaughter, Concealment of Birth and Infanticide, 1900-37
Rachel Dixon (University of Hull, UK) and Tony Ward (Northumbria University, UK)

3. Infanticide and Diminished Responsibility – Reviewing the Relationship
Ronnie Mackay (De Montfort University, UK)

Part II: Understandings, Misunderstanding and Questions of Principle

4. 'Sometimes the Worst Happens': Newspaper Reportage of Infanticide and the Law in England and Wales Since 1922
Daniel JR Grey (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

5. Myths and Moral Agency: A Principled Approach to Infanticide Law
Helen Howard (Teesside University, UK)

6. The Infanticide Act 1938 as a Means to Provide Justice for Women against the Hardships and Harms of Pregnancy and Motherhood?
Emma Milne (Durham University, UK) and Karen Brennan (University of Essex, UK)

Part III: Criminal Justice Responses to Infanticide Beyond England and Wales

7. The Use and Non-Use of Infanticide Provisions in Australian Criminal Laws
Arlie Loughnan (University of Sydney, Australia)

8. Capital Punishment and Infanticide Law in Ireland
Lynsey Black (Maynooth University, Ireland) and David M Doyle (Maynooth University, Ireland)

9. Infanticide in Sweden - From Condemnation to (Too Much?) Consideration
Maria Kaspersson (University of Greenwich, UK)

10 A Crazy Quilt: Infanticide in the United States
Susan Ayres (Texas A&M University, USA)