Principals without Distinction.

Participation in criminal offences has too many uncertainties, many of which are ignored rather than solved by the modern law. Recent cases in complicity fJogee; Ruddock in the UKSC, Miller in the HCA and Chan Kam Shing in the HKCFA) have diverged on whether, and if so, how, to draw traditional distinctions affecting principalship and complicity. Three possible distinctions are particularly important: (I) between a principal offender and an accomplice; (2) between individual crimes: whether it should be substantively easier to convict parties to further crimes beyond a first? (3) between fault elements, most importantly, intention, foresight of a risk, and the role of future conditions. Our view on those distinctions in turn ties into wider principles across the criminal law. For a coherent criminal law, we must understand not only each distinction, and how they stack together, but how lawyers have disagreed, and continue to disagree, about them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]