Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

"Bentham on Stilts: The Bare Relevance of Subjectivity to Retributive Justice"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of  this notable new paper from Professors Dan Markel and Chad Flanders now appearing on SSRN. Here is the abstract: In recent work, various scholars have challenged retributive justice theorists to pay more attention to the subjective experience of punishment, specifically how punishment affects the experiences and well-being of offenders.  The claim developed by these ?subjectivists? is that because people?s experiences with pain and suffering differ, both diachronically and inter-subjectively, their punishments will have to be tailored to individual circumstances as well. Our response is that this set of claims, once scrutinized, is either true, but of limited significance, or nontrivial, but unsound...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).