La censura penal en los estados liberales de derecho se ha justificado históricamente desde el concepto de bien jurídico y desde principio del daño, conforme la tradición sea alemana o anglosajona, respectivamente. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas se observa que tales criterios no pueden hacer frente a nuevos problemas que presentan las sociedades modernas. Tal es el caso de las tipificaciones en forma de delitos acumulativos, es decir conductas que en sí mismas acarrean consecuencias lesivas muy pequeñas, pero que (...) sumadas a otras de igual naturaleza pueden producir graves afectaciones. La literatura ha proporcionado un profuso debate sobre este tema. Aquí se intentará proponer una construcción plausible que sea capaz de justificar esta clasede prohibiciones. Para ello se parte del modelo republicano, que adopta como ideal de libertad, la no dominación. Toda vez que al ser posible la inexistencia de interferencias pero que, sin embargo, una persona vea restringida su libertad por encontrarse bajo el poder de otro (dominio), la idea de “libertad como no dominación” parece más satisfactoria para garantizar buenas condiciones de vida a los sujetos. Se ensayarán dos respuestas, una que considera que la razón de la prohibición se encuentra en el efecto que cada acto produce junto a los demás; y otra, que sólo repara en las consecuencias del acto individual. (shrink)

This review article critically examines R. A. Duff and Stuart P. Green’s wide-ranging Philosophical Foundations of Criminal Law. The book captures well a crucial debate at the heart of its topic: is morality a key for understanding criminal law? I first consider legal moralism arguments answering this question in the affirmative and argue they should be rejected. I next consider alternatives to argue that philosophers of criminal law should look beyond legal moralism for more compelling theories about criminal law.

Germany is joining a long list of European democracies that have modified or expressed a willingness to modify their citizenship laws to denationalize first and then prevent the return of or expel those citizens accused of having participated in terrorist activities abroad. The formal labelling of citizenship deprivation as an administrative measure outside the scope of criminal justice has prevented scholars of criminal law from undertaking a thorough scrutiny of its legitimacy. In this paper I seek to fill this gap. (...) Specifically, after demonstrating why deprivation of citizenship is a measure of a criminal nature, I argue against its legitimacy, either as a punishment or as a risk-based measure. Instead I propose that we should understand citizenship deprivation as a paradigmatic response from an illegitimate enemy criminal law. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I claim that states that choose to denationalize terrorists should do it within the framework of a process with the highest (criminal procedural) guarantees. (shrink)

In this article, I ask whether the state, as opposed to its individual members, can intelligibly and legitimately be criminalized, with a focus on the possibility of its domestic criminalization. I proceed by identifying what I take to be the core objections to such criminalization, and then investigate ways in which they can be challenged. First, I address the claim that the state is not a kind of entity that can intelligibly perpetrate domestic criminal wrongs. I argue against it by (...) building upon an account of the modern state as a moral agent proper, capable of both culpable moral and legal wrongdoing. I then consider objections to the intelligibility and legitimacy of subjecting states to domestic criminal processes, which primarily find their source in the assumption that such subjection would necessarily involve the state prosecuting, judging, and punishing itself. I argue that whether this (questionable) assumption is sound or not, it does not create the kinds of unsolvable quandaries its exponents think it does. I then move on to reject the distinct, yet related, objection that, at least in aspiring liberal jurisdictions, treating the state as a criminal objectionably involves extending to it various substantive and procedural guarantees that, given its nature and raison d’être, it should not have. Finally, I discuss three central objections to punishing the state. First, that organizations like states do not have the phenomenal consciousness required to suffer punishment. Second, that the constant possibility of dispersion of state punishment amongst individual members stands in the way of its justification. Lastly, that whatever justification there may be for making things harder for the state in response to its culpable wrongdoing, such treatment need not be understood as punishment. While partially conceding the strength of these objections, I strive to loosen their grip in ways that show that justified punishment of the state, meaningfully understood as such, remains a distinct possibility. I conclude by contrasting supposed alternatives to the criminalization of states, and by contending that my analysis leaves us with enough to keep the possibility of state criminalization on the table as a justifiable response to state wrongdoing. (shrink)

Philosophical writing about the legal practice of punishment has traditionally focused on two central questions: what (if anything) justifies the practice of tr.

The traditional distinction between retributive and distributive justice misconstrues the place of the criminal law in modern regulatory states. In the context of the regulatory state, the criminal law is a coercive rule-enforcing institution – regardless of whether it also serves the ends of retributive justice. As a rule-enforcing institution, the criminal law is deeply implicated in stabilizing the institutions and legal rules by means of which a state creates and allocates social advantage. As a coercive institution, the criminal law (...) requires justification as an instance of legitimate state authority. The operation of criminal justice institutions should therefore not be evaluated by reference to a distinct set of criteria, but should be evaluated by the same criteria that apply to coercive public institutions generally. (shrink)