What do we need from an account of lex talionis? A response to Lewis

Abstract

This paper is a response to Christopher Lewis’s recent paper on lex talionis. I claim that Lewis’s interpretation cannot answer some of the questions that it needs to. In particular, we need to understand what our fundamental motivation is for subscribing to a principle of proportionality in the first place. Facing this kind of question head on is the only way to rehabilitate the principle of lex talionis—if indeed, it merits rehabilitation.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Bennett, C. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-1210
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© TheAuthor(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Dates:	Submitted: 29 January 2026 Accepted: 11 March 2026 Published (online): 14 May 2026 Published: 9 February 2026
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Date Deposited:	15 May 2026 08:18
Last Modified:	15 May 2026 08:18
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Oxford University Press (OUP)
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1093/jla/laag002
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:241147

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What do we need from an account of lex talionis? A response to Lewis

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