States are not only claiming the right to grant or deny entry to their territories but also enforcing this right against non-citizens in ways that cause significant harm to these individuals. In this article, I argue that endorsing the presumptive right to restrict immigration does not settle the question of when or how it may permissibly inflict harm on individuals to enforce this right. I examine three distinct justifications for causing harm to individuals. First, the justification of defensive harm holds (...) that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others. Second, the justification of protecting property states that harming individuals is morally permissible when they pose an unjustified threat to others’ property interests. Third, I consider the state punishment justification, which maintains that harming individuals is morally permissible when punishment is an appropriate response to their previous conduct. I conclude that any immigration enforcement measure that involves lethal force or the infliction of severe bodily harm is morally impermissible, whether it is used to defend the state or its property. Moreover, criminal sanctions for immigration violations are difficult to justify. (shrink)

There are two classic principles for deciding who should have a right to vote on the laws, the All Affected Principle and the All Subjected Principle. This article is devoted, firstly, to providing a sympathetic reconstruction of the All Subjected Principle, identifying the most credible account of what it is to be subject to the law. Secondly, it shows that that best account still suffers some serious difficulties, which might best be resolved by treating the All Subjected Principle as a (...) subset of the All Affected Principle with which the All Subjected Principle must in any case be supplemented. (shrink)

This is a response to ten critiques of my 2018 book The Realm of Criminal Law, by Stephen Bero and Alex Sarch, Kim Ferzan, Stuart Green, Doug Husak, Nicola Lacey, Sandra Mayson, Victor Tadros, Patrick Tomlin, Alec Walen, and Gideon Yaffe. I take the opportunity to explain the main aims and themes of the book, to clarify some of its arguments, and to note some of the ways in which those arguments need expansion, development, or revision. Topics discussed include: the (...) usefulness and limits of ‘rational reconstruction’ as a method of normative theorising; public wrongs and the scope of the criminal law; the idea of civil order as central to a political theory of criminal law; wrongness constraints on criminalization; mala prohibita and regulatory offences; the ‘De Minimis’ principle; and criminal law ‘abolitionism’. (shrink)