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A Truce In Criminal Law's Distributive Principle Wars?, Paul H. Robinson
A Truce In Criminal Law's Distributive Principle Wars?, Paul H. Robinson
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Crime-control utilitarians and retributivist philosophers have long been at war over the appropriate distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment, with little apparent possibility of reconciliation between the two. In the utilitarians’ view, the imposition of punishment can be justified only by the practical benefit that it provides: avoiding future crime. In the retributivists’ view, doing justice for past wrongs is a value in itself that requires no further justification. The competing approaches simply use different currencies: fighting future crime versus doing justice for past wrongs.
It is argued here that the two are in fact reconcilable, in a fashion. …