Abstract
Philosophia, 37 (2009)
In an article previously published in this journal, Phillip Montague
critically surveys and rejects a handful of contemporary attempts to explain why
state punishment is morally justified. Among those targeted is one of my defences of
the censure theory of punishment, according to which state punishment is justified
because the political community has a duty to express disapproval of those guilty of
injustice. My defence of censure theory supposes, per argumentum, that there is
always some defeasible moral reason for the state to proportionately punish the
guilty, and then demonstrates that censure theory best entails and explains this
intuition. Montague does not question the intuition, but instead argues that three
rival theories of punishment, including his societal-defence view, account for it to no
worse a degree than my censure theory. In this article I defend my initial argument,
noting resources for its defence that Montague does not appreciate and that, I
maintain, provide those who believe that there is always pro tanto injustice in the
state failing to proportionately punish the guilty reason to adopt censure theory over
all competitors, including Montague’s societal-defence theory.