Yanjie (Andrew) Zhu is a PhD candidate and teaching fellow at Melbourne Law School. He has general research interests in the areas of criminal law and legal theory and his research project examines criminal negligence from the perspectives of criminalisation and responsibility. He also researched the areas of comparative corporate and financial law, white collar crime, and digital economy during his time as a research assistant at Monash University.
Prior to joining the PhD program, Andrew studied law in mainland China, Hong Kong, the UK and Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from East China University of Political Science and Law, a Master of Laws from Durham University, and a Juris Doctor from Melbourne Law School, where he was also an assistant editor of the Melbourne Journal of International Law.
Thesis Title
Understanding Negligence: A Theory of Criminalisation and Responsibility
Thesis Summary
Criminal negligence has been framed in a plethora of ways in common-law. The malleability and instability of the concept of negligence in criminal law coupled with the critical attitudes towards the criminalisation of negligence, calls for a careful re-examination and re-imagination. Against this backdrop, the thesis aspires to develop a preliminary theory of criminal negligence by attempting to respond to a central normative question: When, if ever, should negligence be criminal? Two sub-questions will be covered under this theme: (a) Whether and how the existing normative theories of criminalisation explain or respond to the issue of criminalisation of negligence, and (b) What grounds individual responsibility for negligent offences.
Supervisors
- Criminal Law
- Legal Theory
- Moral Philosophy
- Torts Law
- Jurisprudence