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A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore
A Virtuous State Would Not Assign Correctional Housing Based On Ability To Pay, Bradley W. Moore
Michigan Law Review First Impressions
Pay-to-stay jails expose the moral tension between the dominant theories of punishment: retributivism and deterrence. A turn to a third major moral theory—virtue ethics—resolves this tension. According to virtue ethics, the moral worth of an action follows from both the character of the action and the disposition of the actor. Virtuous acts promote human flourishing— the central goal of life—when they are the right actions performed for the right reasons. The virtue ethics theory of punishment suggests that pay-to-stay jails conflict with the promotion of human flourishing. A virtuous state’s criminal justice system would not include fee-based incarceration because it …
Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert
Desert And Deterrence: An Assessment Of The Moral Bases Of The Case For Capital Punishment, Richard O. Lempert
Michigan Law Review
The controversy over the death penalty has generated arguments of two types. The first argument appeals to moral intuitions; the second concerns deterrence. Although both types of argument speak to the morality of systems of capital punishment, the first debate has been dominated by moral philosophers and the second by empirical social scientists. For convenience I shall at times refer to the approach of the moral philosophers as the moral case for (or against) capital punishment or as the argument from morality.