Punishment Theory: Moral or Political?

نویسنده

  • Guyora Binder
چکیده

Is the justification of punishment a moral question? Much contemporary writing on punishment, whether by philosophers or legal scholars, treats it as such. Theories of punishment are taken to be moral theories, and the problem of justifying punishment is presented as a key battle-ground in the war between utilitarian and deontological ethics. The question of how and when the state should punish is reduced to the question of how and when particular persons should punish other persons. This question in turn is treated as just a special case of the more general question whether persons are morally obliged to govern their actions by the aim of maximizing human welfare or by rules of fair treatment. But surely this is an odd way to think about punishment. Punishment is not a behavior, but an institution. It is part of a system that involves conduct norms, an authoritative procedure for generating these norms, an authoritative procedure for decisions to impose sanctions, and some measure of practical power over persons or resources. To punish someone is not just to harm them, nor even just to harm them because of something they have done. It is to stake a claim to a certain kind of institutional authority, even when the institution is only the family. To punish someone is to assert a right and accept an obligation to punish anyone similarly circumstanced and behaved, even if that other person be only a sibling. Punishment is never the isolated act of an individual: to punish is to act as an officer or agent participating in a system for enforcing an authoritatively promulgated norm. Because punishment is part of a system of institutional authority, it is not amenable to a simple moral

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Society for Personality and Social Psychology Association for Research in Personality European Association of Social Psychology Society of Experimental and Social Psychology

Moral dilemmas—like the ‘‘trolley problem’’ or real-world examples like capital punishment—result from a conflict between consequentialist and deontological intuitions (i.e., whether ends justify means). The authors contend that people often resolve such moral conflict by aligning factual beliefs about consequences of acts with evaluations of the act’s inherent morality (i.e., morality independ...

متن کامل

Deontology, Political Morality, and the State Symposium: Political Theory and Criminal Punishment

Sometimes the government makes a policy choice, and, as a result, innocent persons die. How should we morally assess such deaths? For instance, is the government's choice of the reasonable doubt standard or its decision to restrict the death penalty to certain narrow categories responsible for deaths of innocents? If so, does the deontological norm against harming people dictate that the govern...

متن کامل

The Theory of Value Dilemma: A Critique of the Economic Analysis of Criminal Law

Criminal law can justly lay claim to being the native domain of law and economics. From Bentham to Becker, no area of law has been more brightly illuminated by the radiance of economic logic. Not coincidentally, in no other area of the law has the conflict between economics and ordinary moral sensibilities been perceived to be so sharp. When we are deciding how to apportion punishment, our inst...

متن کامل

The Sound of Silence: Anti-Defamation Law and Political Corruption

We explore the role played by libel laws in selecting the information delivered by mass media to voters. The focus is on whether such laws can reduce political corruption and increase voters’ welfare. By endogenizing the response of the voters to information from the media, we clarify under which circumstances regulation reduces or increases corruption. The analysis shows that libel laws can re...

متن کامل

The Sound of Silence: Political Accountability and Libel Law

This paper explores the role played by press regulation in selecting the information mass media deliver to voters. The focus is on whether press regulation can reduce political corruption and increase voters’ welfare. By endogenizing the response of the voters to information from the media, we clarify under which circumstances regulation reduces or increases corruption. We show that punitive la...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2002