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For Capital Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Ernest van den Haag
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Extract

The moral argument contends that crimes deserve retribution, that to impose the deserved punishment is to do justice, and that justice is a moral requirement, an end in itself, independent of any useful effects. The moral desirability of justice can be explained, but not demonstrated in non-deontological fashion. In penal matters, justice and deserved retribution are synonymous. It is for the sake of justice that we try to punish the guilty and not the innocent. Innocents do not deserve punishment. Because of justice, we would not impose punishment on them, even if it were useful to do so.

Type
Capital Punishment
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , Summer–Autumn 1991 , pp. 460 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1991

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References

1 Ehrlich, , “The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death” (1975) 65 Am. Econ. R. 397Google Scholar.

2 Layson, S. K., “Homicide and Deterrence: A Reexamination of the United States Time-Series Evidence” (1985) 52 S. Econ. J. 68Google Scholar.

3 Unless their argument for abolition rests mainly on the possibility of miscarriages of justice.

4 On the contrary: see, e.g., Stack, Steven, “Publicized Executions and Homicide, 1950-80” (1987) 52 Am. Soc. R. 532CrossRefGoogle Scholar.