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"Empirical Desert and the Moral Economy of Punishment"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece by Professor Zachary Calo available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper considers Paul Robinson's theory of empirical desert as an argument for moving beyond the debate between utilitarian and retributivist accounts of punishment.  It is argued that empirical desert, in its attempt to replace philosophy with the insights of the social and biological sciences, fails to ground the foundational act of punishment in an adequate theoretical warrant.  A particular problem confronting empirical desert is that while Robinson shifts the locus of punishment from theory to the intuitions of the relevant community, he does not adequately account for the dynamic process by which communities shape and structure their internal moral life...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 04, 2011 (boomark / email).