Retributivism so dominates criminal theory that lawyers, legal scholars and law students assert with complete confidence that criminal law is justified only in light of violations of another person’s rights. Yet the core tenet of retributivism views criminal law fundamentally through the lens of individual actors, rendering both offender and victim unrecognizably denuded from their social and civic context. Doing so means that retributivism is unable to explain even our most basic criminal law practices, such as why we punish recidivists (...) more than first time offenders or why “hate crimes” are of special concern. A republican view of criminal law brings our most natural intuitions back into focus by insisting that the core of criminal responsibility lies in the offender’s attack on the civic bonds that make living in a society as equals possible. By grounding our punishment practices in an Aristotelian republicanism that for so long was the unquestioned basis of mutual responsibility, we understand that hostility, as expressed in the offender’s “civic character,” matters to us all while still seeing our obligations to reintegrate both victim and offender into our shared civic project. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 2 Seiten: 258-272.

This paper explores the meaning of the word “felony” in thirteenth and fourteenth century England, i.e., during the first two centuries of the English criminal trial jury. To compile a working definition of felony, the paper presents examples of the language of felony drawn from literary and religious sources, in addition to considering the word’s more formulaic appearance in legal records. The paper then analyzes cases ending in acquittal or pardon, highlighting the factors that might take a criminal case out (...) of the realm of felony. It suggests that the very definition of felony and felonious behavior—and thus the essence of criminal responsibility—may be bound up with the idea of mens rea during this period. The paper aims to uncover broader societal understandings of the nature of guilt and innocence, and to highlight connections and disconnections between the formal criminal law of felony, with its heavy emphasis on capital punishment, and popular and ecclesiastical understandings of culpability. (shrink)