Zimmerman’s The Immorality of Punishment: A Critical Essay [Book Review]

Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (1):103-112 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In “The Immorality of Punishment”, Michael Zimmerman attempts to show that punishment is morally unjustified and therefore wrong. In this response, I focus on two main questions. First, I examine whether Zimmerman’s empirical claims—concerning our inability to identify wrongdoers who satisfy conditions on blameworthiness and who might be reformed through punishment, and the comparative efficacy of punitive and non-punitive responses to crime—stand up to scrutiny. Second, I argue that his crucial argument from luck depends on claims about counterfactuals that ought to be rejected. I conclude that though his arguments are powerful, they fall short of his ambitious aim of demonstrating that punishment is always seriously wrong

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,343

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Immorality of Punishment: A Reply to Levy.Michael J. Zimmerman - 2015 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (1):113-122.
Against Legal Punishment.Nathan Hanna - 2022 - In Matthew C. Altman, The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 559-78.
Liberalism and the general justifiability of punishment.Nathan Hanna - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (3):325-349.
The Justification of Deserved Punishment.Stephen Kershnar - 1995 - Dissertation, The University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Capital Punishment as a Response to Evil.Peter Brian Barry - 2015 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 9 (2):245-264.
Crime Victims and the Right to Punishment.David Alm - 2019 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 13 (1):63-81.
Against Legal Punishment.Nathan Hanna - 2022 - In Matthew C. Altman, The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 559-578.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-03-15

Downloads
98 (#221,949)

6 months
6 (#572,300)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Neil Levy
University of Oxford

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility.John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza - 1998 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Mark Ravizza.
Epistemic Luck.Duncan Pritchard - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Free Will and Luck.Alfred R. Mele - 2006 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.

View all 25 references / Add more references