Law Commons^™

Respect And Resistance In Punishment Theory, Alice Ristroph

Studio for Law and Culture

Is it coherent to speak of a right to resist justified punishment? Thomas Hobbes thought so. This essay seeks first to (re)introduce Hobbes as a punishment theorist, and second to use Hobbes to examine what it means to respect the criminal even as we punish him. Hobbes is almost entirely neglected by scholars of criminal law, whose theoretical inquiries focus on liberal, rights-based accounts of retribution (often exemplified by Immanuel Kant) and claims of deterrence or other consequentialist benefits (elucidated, for example, by Jeremy Bentham). Writing before Kant or Bentham, Hobbes offered a fascinating account of punishment that will strike …