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4 - Actions of Mercy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

Austin Sarat
By
Alice Ristroph
Austin Sarat
Affiliation:
Amherst College, Massachusetts
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Summary

They stood gazing at the artificial Negro as if they were faced with some great mystery, some monument to another's victory that brought them together in their common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their differences like an action of mercy. Mr. Head had never known before what mercy felt like because he had been too good to deserve any, but he felt he knew now.

– Flannery O’Connor

To know what mercy is, must one have received it? The losers don't write history, and (known) criminals don't write punishment theory. The scholars who do write punishment theory disagree on how to justify punishment, but they tend to agree that punishment is justifiable on some normative account. And if punishment is just, mercy is viewed as a threat, an extralegal distortion of the principles of legal justice. Quite literally, a merciful judgment is a judgment against punishment. It seems those who are for punishment are logically required to be against mercy. But do the critics of mercy fully understand what they oppose? Is the philosophical critique of mercy equivalent to victors’ history?

Type
Chapter
Information
Merciful Judgments and Contemporary Society
Legal Problems, Legal Possibilities
 , pp. 205 - 233
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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  • Actions of Mercy
  • Austin Sarat, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Merciful Judgments and Contemporary Society
  • Online publication: 05 December 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139030656.008
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  • Actions of Mercy
  • Austin Sarat, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Merciful Judgments and Contemporary Society
  • Online publication: 05 December 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139030656.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Actions of Mercy
  • Austin Sarat, Amherst College, Massachusetts
  • Book: Merciful Judgments and Contemporary Society
  • Online publication: 05 December 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139030656.008
Available formats
×