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Desert, Deontology, And Vengeance First Annual Edward J. Shoen Leading Scholars Symposium: Paul H. Robinson, Youngjae Lee
Desert, Deontology, And Vengeance First Annual Edward J. Shoen Leading Scholars Symposium: Paul H. Robinson, Youngjae Lee
Faculty Scholarship
In a series of recent writings, Paul Robinson has defended “empirical desert” as the way of deriving distributive principles for determining who should be punished and by how much. Desert is, of course, an idea with a long history, and its precise role in criminal law has been much debated. In addressing various criticisms of desert in criminal law, Robinson distinguishes empirical desert from what he calls “deontological desert” and “vengeful desert.” Robinson’s strategy, which I call “divide and deflect,” fights off various objections traditionally leveled against the use of desert in criminal law by arguing that most of those …
Deontology, Political Morality, And The State Symposium: Political Theory And Criminal Punishment, Youngjae Lee
Deontology, Political Morality, And The State Symposium: Political Theory And Criminal Punishment, Youngjae Lee
Faculty Scholarship
Sometimes the government makes a policy choice, and, as a result, innocent persons die. How should we morally assess such deaths? For instance, is the government’s choice of the reasonable doubt standard or its decision to restrict the death penalty to certain narrow categories responsible for deaths of innocents? If so, does the deontological norm against harming people dictate that the government loosen the evidentiary standard for conviction or widen the availability of capital punishment? This Article argues that the traditional distinctions between intending and foreseeing harm and between causing harm and allowing harm to occur are insufficient to absolve …