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Shame And The Meaning Of Punishment, Chad Flanders

Cleveland State Law Review

This Essay critiques the shaming punishments debate, not in the interest of defending one side or the other, but to make more explicit the paradox with which this Essay began. This Essay also advances the proposal that a consistent liberalism, one that demands that all citizens be respected equally, is incompatible with any punishment that requires the infliction of hard treatment (treatment which inflicts pain or suffering) or humiliation on the offender. It is important to bracket the practical consequences of this proposal. Perhaps it was proposals like this one that made Nietzsche worry about the progressive softening of societies …