Bennett, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-1210 (2019) The authority of moral oversight : on the legitimacy of criminal law. Legal Theory, 25 (3). pp. 153-177. ISSN 1352-3252
Abstract
An influential view in recent philosophy of punishment is that the apparatus of criminal justice should be geared at least in part to state censure of wrongdoing. I argue that if it were to be so geared, such an apparatus would make ambitious claims to authority, and that the legitimacy of the relevant state would then depend on whether those claims can be vindicated. This paper looks first at what kind of authority is being claimed by this apparatus. The criminal law, I argue, cannot merely be thought of as claiming a right to rule and to be obeyed. Rather, its authority is better understood as the authority of moral oversight: a power to alter, at will (though within certain limits), citizens’ liability to answer for their compliance with—and to be officially censured for their failure to comply with—a designated set of pre-existing moral reasons. The paper then looks at whether a state could realistically be expected to possess such authority—that is, whether a state that claims to have such a power could ever be legitimate.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Cambridge University Press. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Legal Theory. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Aug 2019 14:58 |
Last Modified: | 10 Dec 2021 09:36 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S1352325219000119 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:149883 |
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Filename: Authority of Moral Oversight Legal Theory - final.pdf
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