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Full-Text Articles in Law
Torture And Respect, Jacob Bronsther
Torture And Respect, Jacob Bronsther
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
There are two well-worn arguments against a severe punishment like long-term incarceration: it is disproportionate to the offender’s wrongdoing and an inefficient use of state resources. This Article considers a third response, one which penal reformers and theorists have radically neglected, even though it is recognized in the law: the punishment is degrading. In considering penal degradation, this Article examines what judges and scholars have deemed the exemplar of degrading treatment—torture. What is torture, and why is it wrong to torture people? If we can answer this question, this Article maintains, then we can understand when and why certain …
Mass Incarceration Paradigm Shift?: Convergence In An Age Of Divergence, Mugambi Jouet
Mass Incarceration Paradigm Shift?: Convergence In An Age Of Divergence, Mugambi Jouet
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
The peculiar harshness of modern American justice has led to a vigorous scholarly debate about the roots of mass incarceration and its divergence from humanitarian sentencing norms prevalent in other Western democracies. Even though the United States reached virtually world-record imprisonment levels between 1983 and 2010, the Supreme Court never found a prison term to be “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. By countenancing extreme punishments with no equivalent elsewhere in the West, such as life sentences for petty recidivists, the Justices’ reasoning came to exemplify the exceptional nature of American justice. Many scholars concluded that punitiveness had …
The Thin Blue Line From Crime To Punishment, Alice Ristroph
The Thin Blue Line From Crime To Punishment, Alice Ristroph
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
Criminal law scholarship is marked by a sharp fault line separating substantive criminal law from criminal procedure. Philosophical work focuses almost exclusively on the substantive side of that line, addressing adjudicative procedure (the trial process) rarely and investigative procedure (especially police conduct) almost never. Instead, criminal law theorists devote substantial attention to just two questions: what conduct should be criminal, and why is punishment justified? This essay argues that criminal law theory cannot adequately address these favored subjects—the definition of crime and the justification of punishment—without also addressing the enforcement mechanisms that link crimes to punishments. Specifically, philosophers of criminal …