International records / OpenAlex research

Power and Criminal Law: Criminalization of Conduct Norms in a Colonial Regime

The central focus of this paper is to investigate the role of power (economic, political, and military) in defining an act as criminal. The theory in question is the functionalist/consensus argument that power is a facility for the performance of functions in and on behalf of society as a system, and not for egoistic ends (Parsons, 1957), and that criminal law is a product of customary beliefs, ideals, values, and taboos of a society that are codified in state law (Durkheim, 1939; Parsons, 1957). In an effort to evaluate these arguments, the development of bigamy law in colonial Nigeria and th…