Law Commons^™

On Equality, Bias Crimes, And Just Deserts, Kenneth Simons

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent article, Professors Alon Harel and Gideon Parchomovsky propose to widen the focus of criminal law beyond the culpability of the offender and the wrongdoing he commits. Criminal law, they believe, should also encompass the state's special egalitarian duty to protect the interests of the most vulnerable victims of crime. They offer this suggestion for two reasons - to give a convincing justification of bias crime legislation, which they claim a retributivist approach cannot do; and, more broadly, to remedy retributivism's supposedly inadequate attention to the interests of crime victims.

Although these egalitarian goals are worthy, the authors' …