Why standing to blame may be lost but authority to hold accountable retained: criminal law as a regulative public institution

Lacey, Nicola ORCID: 0009-0006-6488-0918 and Pickard, Hanna (2021) Why standing to blame may be lost but authority to hold accountable retained: criminal law as a regulative public institution. Monist, 104 (2). pp. 265-280. ISSN 0026-9662

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Abstract

Moral and legal philosophy are too entangled: moral philosophy is prone to model interpersonal moral relationships on a juridical image, and legal philosophy often proceeds as if the criminal law is an institutional reflection of juridically imagined interpersonal moral relationships. This article challenges this alignment and in so doing argues that the function of the criminal law lies not fundamentally in moral blame, but in regulation of harmful conduct. The upshot is that, in contrast to interpersonal relationships, the criminal law cannot lose its standing to blame through institutional analogues of hypocrisy, complicity, and meddling. Rather, certain forms of structural and severe historical and contemporary injustice point to the question of the overall legitimacy of state authority.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press.
Divisions:	Law
Date Deposited:	20 May 2021 07:03
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 02:32
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/110508

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