Punishment and the Morality of Law.

Source: (2005) In Erik Claes, René Foqué, and Tony Peters, eds., Punishment, Restorative Justice and the Morality of Law. Antwerp; Oxford: Intersentia. Pp. 121-144.

I will begin, in section 1, by making my topic a little more precise, to focus not on the meaning, justification or character of criminal punishment in the abstract, but on what proper role it can play in a liberal democracy: as we will see, this gives the problem of punishment a particular and particularly troubling, significance. In section 2, I will sketch a conception of punishment that, I will argue, shows how it could be appropriate in a liberal democracy; and in section 3, I will argue that such an account of punishment should satisfy at least some of the legitimate concerns of advocates of “restorative justice,” whilst rejecting the sharp distinction that both they and their critics so often draw between restorative and punitive measures. (excerpt).