During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from (...) both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field. (shrink)

How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? Traditional attempts to justify punishment as a deterrent or as retribution fail, but Duff suggests that punishment can be understood as a communicative attempt to bring a wrong-doer to repent her crime. This account is supported by discussions of moral blame, of penance, of the nature of the law's demands, (...) and of the proper meaning and purpose of the criminal process of trial and verdict: it deals both with the ideals that should inform a system of criminal law and the extent to which those ideals are actualised in existing institutions and practices. The conclusion is pessimistic: punishment cannot be justified within our legal system; and this gap between the ideal and the actual presents us with serious moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Jerome Bickenbach has provided a fair and sympathetic account of my argument in Trials and Punishments, and has clarified some of the book’s obscurities - for which I am very grateful: I will focus my response on his main objection to my account of punishment, since I am not persuaded that the objection holds.Bickenbach argues that my ideal account of what punishment ought to be if it is to be adequately justified would actually show, if it succeeds, that criminal punishment (...) cannot be justified at all. ‘Criminal punishment, it would appear, is unjustifiable when it is needed, but justifiable only if it is no longer required’. It would be justifiable if it was imposed on a criminal who shared the values embodied in the laws of the true community to which she belonged: but it would then be unnecessary, since in such cases ‘blame alone’ would suffice for the communicative and persuasive purposes which punishment should ideally serve. It would be necessary if the criminal was a committed nonconformist who rejected the community’s values: but it would then be unjustifiable, since in such cases it could not serve the purposes which punishment should ideally serve. (shrink)