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Social Justice and the Problem of Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Wojciech Sadurski
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Extract

Until very recently the dominant approach to the theory of punishment has been to discuss it in isolation from any general theory of the just distribution of benefits and burdens in a society. Almost without exception, the debate between the competing theories of punishment has run separately from the theory of distributive justice, as if the words “just” in “just punishment” and “just reward” belonged to two different species of “justice”. Perhaps the most important exception to this rule has been the position of radical utilitarians — i.e., act-utilitarians of J. J. C. Smart's genre, or wealth-maximization theorists of Richard Posner's ilk — who consciously treat the domains of economic distribution and of criminal punishment as two areas of application of one and the same set of over-arching principles. But, since neither for Smart nor for Posner is distributive justice (whether regarding economic goods, or penalties) a morally significant virtue, their theories really do not detract from the general trend that, in the literature on punishment, the conceptions of retributive and distributive justice are largely independent.

Type
Theories of Justice and the Problem of Punishment
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , Summer–Autumn 1991 , pp. 302 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1991

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References

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12 For reasons which I have explained elsewhere (see Sadurski, supra n. 10, at 256-8), I do not find a theory postulating a radical hiatus between the status of the institution and the application of punishment helpful nor justified.

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16 Sadurski, W., “Distributive Justice and the Theory of Punishment” (1985) 5 Oxford J. of Legal Studies 47–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in particular 48-52.

17 I attempt to substantiate this claim in my Giving Desert Its Due, supra n. 10, at 223-5.

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22 Morris, H., “Persons and Punishment” (1968) 52 Monist 475–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more recently, however, Morris has outlined a modified version of his theory, abandoning the concept of balance of benefits and burdens, see “A Paternalistic Theory of Punishment”, in Sartorius, R., ed., Paternalism (Minneapolis, U. of Minn. P., 1983) 139–52Google Scholar.

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25 See articles referred to in supra n. 2, where Davis develops his “unfair advantage” principle.

26 This section of the paper incorporates some points made in Sadurski, supra n. 16.

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37 Ibid., at 209.

38 “Why Attempts Deserve Less Punishment than Complete Crimes”, supra n. 2.

39 See also Schulhofer, S. J., “Harm and Punishment: A Critique of Emphasis on the Results of Conduct in the Criminal Law” (1974) 122 U. Pa. L. R. 1497, at 1602Google Scholar (arguing that attempted and successful crimes should be treated equally).

40 See e.g., Fitzgerald, P.J., Criminal Law and Punishment (Oxford U. P., 1962) 98Google Scholar.

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47 Goldman, A. H., “Toward a New Theory of Punishment” (1982) 1 Law and Philosophy 57–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 61; see also Bedau, H. A., “Retribution and the Theory of Punishment” (1978) 75 J. of Philosophy 601–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 617; Burgh, supra n. 35, at 205; Honderich, supra n. 8, at 137.

48 104 S.Ct. 3065 (1984).

49 Ibid., at 3079 n. 14.

50 Rawls, supra n. 11, at 204-205; MacCormick, supra n. 44, at 9-12.

51 I attempted it in my book quoted supra n. 10, at 263-5; see also Daniels, N., “Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty”, in Daniels, N., ed., Reading Rawls (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1975)Google Scholar.

52 See e.g., Bazelon, D. L., “The Morality of the Criminal Law” (1976) 49 S. Cal. L. R. 385Google Scholar; Richards, D.A.J., “Human Rights and the Moral Foundations of the Substantive Criminal Law” (1979) 13 Georgia L. R. 1395, at 1432–33Google Scholar; Delgado, R., “‘Rotten Social Background’: Should the Criminal Law Recognize a Defense of Severe Environmental Deprivation?” (1985) 3 Law & Inequality 9Google Scholar; Vandervort, L., “Social Justice in the Modern Regulatory State: Duress, Necessity and the Consensual Model in Law” (1987) 6 Law & Philosophy 205–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I do not suggest that the general view that a socially disadvantaged criminal deserves less severe punishment ordinarily has its source in the “balance of benefits and burdens” conception of punishment. Usually it seems to originate from our thinking about free will and determinism (the degree of guilt is lower when people are “compelled” by their social conditions to commit a crime), or from considerations of mercy and sympathy towards the worstoff. All I say here is that this view may be easily squared with our theory of punishment, through re-interpretation of the concept of autonomy.

53 Davis, “Harm and Retribution”, supra n. 2, at 248.

54 Ibid.

55 It is significant that Rawls describes the principles of the right as these principles which “establish a final ordering among the conflicting claims that persons make upon another” while the principles of the good are about “what is the good of particular individuals”, Rawls, supra n. 11, at 448. This merely paraphrases the distinction between the self-regarding and other-regarding actions so crucial to Mill's harm principle.

56 Falls, M. M., “Retribution, Reciprocity, and Respect for Persons” (1987) 6 Law & Philosophy 25–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 30.

57 Ibid., at 31.

58 Deigh, J., “On the Right to Be Punished: Some Doubts” (1984) 94 Ethics 191–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 203. See also Hampton, Jean, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment” (1984) 13 Philosophy & Public Affairs 208–38Google Scholar, esp. at 214 (justifying punishment as a way to benefit the person who will experience it).

59 Falls, supra n. 56, at 30-31.

60 See further Sadurski, W., “‘When Ideals Clash’: Smith, Calabresi, and the Priority of the Right over the Good” (1987) 6 Law & Philosophy 259–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sadurski, W., “The Right, the Good, and the Jurisprude” (1988/1989) 7–8 Law & PhilosophyGoogle Scholar; see also inter alia, Dworkin, R., “Liberalism”, in A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, Harvard U. P., 1985)Google Scholar; Richards, D.A.J., Toleration and the Constitution (New York, Oxford U. P., 1986)Google Scholar, chap. 8; but for arguments to the contrary see Raz, J., The Morality of Freedom (Oxford U. P., 1986) chaps. 5 & 6Google Scholar; Smith, R.M., Liberalism and American Constitutional Law (Cambridge, Harvard U. P., 1985) chap. 8Google Scholar.