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Sentencing as Art — A Response: Sentencing as a Just System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 February 2016

Mordechai Kremnitzer
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Extract

The approach of my good friend Shachar illustrates the saying that uncompromising aspiration to perfection is a hindrance to progress. To me, his approach, whereby “we will only have our personal intuitions to tell us who was judged correctly, but our personal intuitions may be wrong”, is unacceptable, both in itself, and from the point of view of the conclusions to be drawn therefrom under Shachar's central thesis.

A. Ambiguity in Shachar's Thesis

But first, the thesis is not entirely clear. On page 648, he writes as follows: “… I believe that intuitive answers to complex moral questions are not necessarily arbitrary. One choice is probably better or worse than the others, yet it often cannot be rationally and conclusively demonstrated to be so”.

Type
Determining Penalties (2): Norm Versus Discretion
Information
Israel Law Review , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , Summer–Autumn 1991 , pp. 662 - 680
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1991

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References

1 Shachar, Yoram, “Sentencing as Art”, in this issue, at p. 638Google Scholar.

2 M. Kriele, Kriterien der Gerechtigkeit (Berlin, 1963) 71.

3 Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1, para. 3.

4 Friedrich, C. J., “Justice: The Political Act” Nomos VI, 31Google Scholar.

5 von Savigny, Eike, Juristiches Dogmatik and Wissenschaftstheorie (Munich, 1976) 120Google Scholar.

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7 C. L. Stevenson, “Noncognitivism and Relativism”, in P. W. Taylor, supra n. 6, at 384.

8 Ibid., at 387.

9 R. M. Hare, “Decisions and Principles”, in P. W. Taylor, supra n. 6, at 468.

10 M. Kriele, supra n. 2, at 104.

11 Ibid., at 56.

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16 Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, para. 1132a.

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