criminal-law united-kingdom england-and-wales legal-terms
What does &quot;forensic practicability&quot; mean?
<p>Herring. <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/criminal-law-9780198811817?cc=ca&amp;lang=en&amp;" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Criminal Law: Text, Cases, and Materials</em> (8 edn, 2018)</a>. p. 728 last para.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>      By contrast with the House of Lords, the view taken here is that a conviction for a stigmatic
offence is a sanction in its own right and that sanctions should be confined to the blameworthy.
The non- conviction of the blameless should be a pervasive principle of substantive
criminal law limited only by the need to theorize and practise criminal law as a system of rules
and by the exigencies of <strong>forensic practicability</strong>. Those limitations entail that many ‘normal’ life
narratives cannot afford grounds of excuse, however exculpatory the force of the narrative
may be. But other accounts, not currently represented in standard defences, can be brought
within the framework of substantive criminal law. If it can be done it should be done in order
to diminish the incidence of unnecessary criminal convictions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can't even infer which of the <a href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/forensic" rel="nofollow noreferrer">two meanings of &quot;forensic&quot;</a>!</p>

<p><a href="https://www.lexico.com/definition/forensic" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>Forensic</strong></a> in this context means &quot;relating to courts of law.&quot;</p>
<p><a href="https://www.lexico.com/definition/practicability" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>Practicability</strong></a> includes <em>viability, achievability and attainability</em> among its synonyms.</p>
<p>One way of rephrasing the paragraph:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The non- conviction of the blameless should be a pervasive principle of substantive criminal law limited only by the need to theorize and practise criminal law as a system of rules and by the exigencies of forensic practicability.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is to say words to the effect:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not convicting innocent people should be a key objective, restricted only by the rule of law and the necessity for what can realistically be achieved by the courts.</p>
</blockquote>
