Title
Can Self-Defense Justify Punishment?
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2012
Abstract
This piece is a review essay on Victor Tadros’s The Ends of Harm. Tadros rejects retributive desert but believes punishment can be justified instrumentally without succumbing to the problems of thoroughgoing consequentialism and endorsing using people as means. He believes he can achieve these results through extension of the right of self-defense. I argue that Tadros fails in this endeavor: he has a defective account of the means principle; his rejection of desert leads to gross mismatches of punishment and culpability; and he cannot account for punishment of inchoate crimes.
Digital USD Citation
Alexander, Larry, "Can Self-Defense Justify Punishment?" (2012). Institute on Law and Philosophy. 48.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/law_philosophy_scholarship/48