Type 1: Focused Summary Someone shows mercy when they suspend a deserved punishment or waive retribution. While Heidi Hurd acknowledges the fact that in general, retributivists are correct in stating that mercy is “an unjustified gesture and a dubious moral value,” she sets out to prove that because mercy is…

Type 4: Critical Application Vera Bergelson’s Does Fault Matter? works through the complicated question of whether it is acceptable to punish people who, “through no fault of their own, produced or threatened harm to others” (Bergelson 375). Bergelson frames her article with the idea that this is an important question…

Type 2: Comparative Insight Michael Moore’s The Moral Worth of Retribution details arguments in favor of retributivism, a justification for punishment that’s goal is “…[having] punishment institutions and for us to use those institutions to mete out a particular punishment to a particular person on a particular occasion [who deserves]…

Type 3: Critical Engagement Punishment: Consequentialism is David Wood’s first of three essays on the philosophy of punishment. Consequentialist punishment tends to justify the practice or institution of punishment according to its consequences (Wood 455). Because this is the first essay in his series, Wood frames it with an explanation…

Type 1: Focused Summary Tadros opens his piece with two assumptions, both of which I found to be generally true of society. The first is that poor people are impoverished as a result of distributive injustice, and the second is that this fact makes them more likely to commit criminal…

Type 4: Critical Application Silwa’s The Power of Excuses argues that excuses are an integral part of our society. Making and accepting others’ excuses is how we hold one another responsible (Silwa 1). Contrary to the generally-held belief that whether or not an excuse exculpates must be taken on a…

Type 3: Critical Engagement David Enoch’s Moral Luck and the Law approaches the long-standing philosophical debate regarding moral luck. …

Type 2: Comparative Insight In his Mens Rea by the Numbers, Gideon Yaffe addresses the idea that people lacking mens rea should not be held criminally responsible for an action. He notes that an exception to this idea is certain crimes that, when requiring that mens rea be proven in…

Type 1: Focused Summary Cornford’s article takes issue with the fact that criminal theorists unanimously endorse the wrongness constraint as being implicit to criminalization. On the surface, Cornford explains, this principle seems obvious. Criminal sanctions are condemnatory, so to criminalize something is to subject a person who engages in that…