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Defense And Desert: When Reasons Don’T Share, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

All Faculty Scholarship

Many retributivists maintain that when a defendant commits an offense, (1) the defendant forfeits rights against punishment and (2) it is intrinsically good for the defendant to get the punishment he deserves. Self-defense theorists often maintain that when certain conditions are met, (1) an aggressor forfeits his rights against defensive force and (2) the aggressor may be harmed instrumentally to prevent his attack. In the context of a symposium on Uwe Steinhoff’s "Just War Theory," this paper examines the intersection of defense and desert. First, may desert and defense be aggregated when, for instance, the amount of harm that is …