Publication Date

2002

Journal

Wake Forest Law Review

Abstract

In this response to Darryl Brown's important article, Street Crime, Corporate Crime, and the Contingency of Criminal Liability, Professor Huigens argues that Brown has chosen the wrong theory of punishment on which to rest his case for a more regulatory, less punitive, approach to street crime. Brown has chosen the best, most sophisticated consequentialist theory of punishment, as developed principally by Dan Kahan. However, consequentialist punishment theory of any kind has a significant drawback: it has no plausible conception of criminal fault. As a result, Brown is constrained to argue that the language of desert and retribution should be muted in our dealings with street crime. But this makes public, political acceptance of his reform proposals far less likely. Brown is aware of, but neglects, an alternative theory of punishment that would have better served his purposes. A virtue-ethics, or aretaic, theory of punishment would have allowed Brown to speak the language of both deterrence and retribution. This point is illustrated by aretaic analyses of the drug court movement and the battered woman's defense, with special attention to answering political objections from the right and the left.

Volume

37

Issue

1

First Page

1

Last Page

28

Publisher

Wake Forest University School of Law

Keywords

Punishment, Penology, Criminal Law and Procedure, Environmental Law, Sentencing and Punishment, Business and the Law, Defendants, Legal Practice and Procedure

Disciplines

Criminal Law | Criminal Procedure | Environmental Law | Law

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