Is there room for tax laws that would tax compensation differently than they would loss suffered by the person receiving compensation? This question must be posed at the outset of the discussion of taxation and tort compensation. The unanimous view would seem to be against taxing compensation resulting from loss that would not have been liable to tax. It follows that if the tax laws bring about such a result, for example, in Israel with regard to the interest component up to the date of judgment in compensation for loss not in the nature of income, or if such compensation is liable to capital profits tax, then the tax law concerned should be corrected. A more difficult question, however, is whether to exempt from tax compensation for loss of earnings brought about by personal injury – particularly physical injury.

The deontological justification of punishment is generally associated with the notion of “retributive justice”. This notion, however, underlies only one of two distinct approaches by which one may attempt to justify punishment within deontological morality. According to this, the classical approach, punishment is to be regarded as an end in itself, intrinsically valuable, from the moral point of view. According to other deontological views, however, punishment has only instrumental value – not, as in consequentialism, in the maximization of some general social good, but in the maintenance and equal distribution of basic individual rights. Borrowing Dworkin's terminology, this view can be called a “right-based” conception of punishment.