Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Retribution, The Death Penalty, And The Limits Of Human Judgment, Tony Roark

Tony Roark

So serious a matter is capital punishment that we must consider very carefully any claim regarding its justification. Brian Calvert has offered a new version of the "argument from arbitrariness," according to which a retributivist cannot consistently hold that some, but not all, first-degree murderers may justifiably receive the death penalty, when it is conceived to be a unique form of punishment. At the heart of this argument is the line-drawing problem, and I am inclined to this that it is a genuine challenge for the retributivist. I respond on behalf of the retributivist by formulating a line-drawing method that …