Desert, Deontology, And Vengeance First Annual Edward J. Shoen Leading Scholars Symposium: Paul H. Robinson,
2010
Fordham University School of Law
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 …
