There are numerous instances by which legal regulation legal professionals are indispensable. The life of the criminal law begins with criminalization. To criminalize an act-kind—name it \(\phi\)ing—is to make it a criminal offense to commit tokens of that type. Many claim that if it is a crime to \(\phi\) then \(\phi\)ing is legally wrongful—it is something that, within the eyes of the legislation, ought not to be done (Hart 1994, 27; Gardner 2007, 239; Tadros 2016, 91). On this view, we’re not invited to commit crimes—like homicide, or driving uninsured—just as long as we willingly take the prescribed legal penalties. So far as the law is anxious, legal conduct is to be prevented. That is so whether or not we’re keen to take the results.

Whatever view of harm we take, we must additionally determine whether or not all harms rely for the needs of a given harm principle. Folks …