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The Disutility Of Injustice, Paul H. Robinson, Geoffrey P. Goodwin, Michael Reisig
The Disutility Of Injustice, Paul H. Robinson, Geoffrey P. Goodwin, Michael Reisig
Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law
For more than half a century, the retributivists and the crime-control instrumentalists have seen themselves as being in an irresolvable conflict. Social science increasingly suggests, however, that this need not be so. Doing justice may be the most effective means of controlling crime. Perhaps partially in recognition of these developments, the American Law Institute's recent amendment to the Model Penal Code's "purposes" provision – the only amendment to the Model Code in the 47 years since its promulgation – adopts desert as the primary distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment. That shift to desert has prompted concerns by two ...
Engaging Capital Emotions, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas
Engaging Capital Emotions, Douglas A. Berman, Stephanos Bibas
Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law
The Supreme Court, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, is about to decide whether the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for child rape. Commentators are aghast, viewing this as a vengeful recrudescence of emotion clouding sober, rational criminal justice policy. To their minds, emotion is distracting. To ours, however, emotion is central to understand the death penalty. Descriptively, emotions help to explain many features of our death-penalty jurisprudence. Normatively, emotions are central to why we punish, and denying or squelching them risks prompting vigilantism and other unhealthy outlets for this normal human reaction. The emotional case for the death penalty for child ...
How Psychology Is Changing The Punishment Theory Debate, Paul H. Robinson
How Psychology Is Changing The Punishment Theory Debate, Paul H. Robinson
Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law
This brief essay reviews the contributions that social psychology is making the debate among criminal law theorists on the proper principle for the distribution of criminal liability and punishment. Included are a discussion of suggestions that deterrence may be ineffective as a distributive principle, that incapacitation of dangerous persons may be effective but might be more effective if pursued through a detention system distinct from the criminal justice system, and that desert as a distributive principle, ironically, might be the most effective for controlling crime. Available for download at http://ssrn.com/abstract=956130