Markus D. Dubber, Professor of Law, University of Toronto

Markus D. Dubber is Professor of Law and Director of the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto. Much of his scholarship has focused on theoretical, comparative, and historical aspects of criminal law. He has published, as author or editor, over twenty books and more than eighty papers; he has been translated into German, Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, and Spanish. His publications include The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law (2014), Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach (2016, with Tatjana Hörnle), Foundational Texts in Modern Criminal Law (2014), and The Police Power (2005)

"Compelling reading even for those unfamiliar with penality in Germany and the US. And the fruitfulness of his comparative-historical study commends the critical tools that he employs." -- James Monaghan, Sydney Law Review

"The book is a good read not only for legal comparatists or legal historians, but also for the criminal law scholars themselves." -- Kimmo Nuotio, Bergen Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice

"Markus Dubber's unparalleled comparative and historical scholarship on criminal law takes readers to the heart of the fundamental tension between the project of building liberal democratic societies and the state's power to punish. The Dual Penal State is essential reading for anyone grappling with how to move forward from the manifest disaster of excessive punishment and mass incarceration in the United States and its imitators around the globe." -- Jonathan Simon, Berkeley Law

"This book is an important summary and development of Dubber's ongoing interrogation of the relationship between police and law. The primary focus of the book is the crisis of liberal penality, which he sees in the prima facie illegality of state penal violence and the continuing failure of liberal criminal law theory adequately to address this. Over the course of his exploration of the development of US and German criminal law, he develops a powerful and wide-ranging, critique of the evasions and diversions of contemporary criminal law theory - and how these evasions contribute to the lack of scrutiny of penal power." -- Lindsay Farmer, University of Glasgow

"Markus Dubber illuminates paradoxes of state power and challenges for the project of liberal criminal law. The book must attract the attention of a wide readership across legal systems and legal traditions. The concept of a dual penal state proves a useful instrument to shed a critical light on historical developments in criminal law and criminal law science, both in Germany and the United States." -- Tatjana Hörnle, Humboldt University, Berlin