Master Principles of Criminalization?

Author(s):  
R A Duff
Keyword(s):  

This chapter turns to criminalization, and the question whether we should seek a ‘master principle’ by which to guide criminalization deliberations. Different kinds of master principle are distinguished (positive/negative, responsive/preventive, pro tanto/categorical, thick/thin); familiar principles (notably harm principles) are criticized. A plausible master principle should be positive, pro tanto, at least partly preventive, and thin: it will leave most of the substantive normative work in deciding what to criminalize still to be done. A thin master principle emerges from the preceding chapters: we have good reason to criminalize a type of conduct if and only if it constitutes a public wrong; it constitutes a public wrong if and only if it violates the polity’s civil order. This leaves the questions of how the polity’s civil order is constituted, and what kinds of conduct violate it, to be decided; but it shows what kinds of argument are relevant to criminalization decisions.

Author(s):  
R A Duff

This chapter explains the ‘public wrongs’ criminalization principle. However, criminalization is one among various possible responses to public wrongs: so we must ask whether we have good reason to criminalize a public wrong rather than responding in another way. To illustrate the working of a ‘public wrongs’ principle, examples of three kinds of offence are discussed. First, ‘mala in se’, consisting in conduct supposedly wrongful prior to its legal regulation: the criminalization process here involves constructing a civic conception of the wrong. Second, different types of ‘malum prohibitum’ (consisting in conduct that might be wrongful only because legally prohibited) are discussed, to show how violations of pre-criminal regulations can constitute criminalizable wrongs. Third, ‘pre-emptive’ offences are discussed: they criminalize conduct only remotely connected to the mischief at which the law is aimed; it is important to see how far such offences can be justified—and subjected to principled constraint.


Author(s):  
R A Duff

This chapter provides a preliminary discussion of ‘legal moralism’. It distinguishes ‘negative’ from ‘positive’ legal moralism; it defends negative legal moralism (we may not criminalize conduct that is not wrongful prior to its criminalization), and shows why positive legal moralism (the wrongfulness of a type of conduct gives us reason to criminalize it) is attractive. It criticizes the most familiar form of positive legal moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize all morally wrongful conduct, as being implausibly over-expansive, and argues for a modest legal moralism according to which criminal law is concerned only with public wrongs. The idea of a public wrong is explained through a discussion of professional ethics, and an analogy between codes of professional ethics, dealing with wrongdoing that falls within a particular practice, and criminal law, as concerned with wrongdoing that falls within the distinctive practice of civic life—of a polity.


Author(s):  
R A Duff

This chapter offers an account of the practice of civic life: of the ‘public realm’, within which criminal law operates as public law. ‘Civil order’, the normative ordering of the polity’s life, is central to this public realm: it is structured by the values through which a polity constitutes itself; it can be partly defined by a written constitution, but is also implicit in the polity’s institutions and practices. A conception of civil order depends on a normative distinction between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’: we must attend to different public–private distinctions. We must also attend to the preconditions of civil order: what kinds of shared understanding are necessary; what can be said to dissenters? Given a conception of a polity’s civil order, and its public realm, we can understand a ‘public wrong’ as a wrong that falls within that public realm, and violates that civil order.


Author(s):  
Jens Damgaard Thaysen

Modern states pursue most of their (domestic) ends by creating law and acting in accordance with the law they create. Moreover, many believe states ought to pursue most of their ends this way. If a state ought to do something, then chances are it ought to do it by creating, abolishing, changing, upholding, or enforcing some law. Therefore, almost any kind of political philosophy with bearing on what states should do has bearing on what law should be like. Justifying the legal proscription of some conduct involves more than just showing that citizens ought to refrain from that conduct. Legally restricting conduct is an exercise of coercion and must be justified as such. Criminal prohibitions in particular require special justification, as they are not only coercive but also commit the state to deliberately inflict the harm and stigma of punishment on some of its own citizens. Nevertheless, if the state must coerce its citizens, it ought generally to do so through a law that conforms to the rule of law. Law conforms to the rule of law if it is capable of guiding the citizens as they act and plan for the future. This the law can do only if it is open, clear, prospective, and stable, such that citizens can know what it demands now and predict with reasonable certainty what it will demand in the future. Conformity to the rule of law promotes freedom and is required to respect human dignity. Much of the debate about the justification and scope of legal coercion revolves around several principles that advance claims about what considerations are relevant to the justifiability of law. These principles all have the following structure: The fact that a legal restriction of a certain kind is related in a certain way to a certain type of conduct has a certain impact on whether that restriction is justifiable. Common principles include (a) legal moralism, according to which it is always a good reason to criminalize conduct that the conduct is wrongful; (b) the wrongness constraint, according to which criminalizing morally permissible conduct is never justified; (c) liberalism, according to which it is always a good reason to criminalize conduct that the conduct is either harmful or seriously offensive to others, and criminalizing conduct that is neither harmful nor offensive is never justified; (d) the public wrong principle, according to which it is always a good reason to criminalize conduct that the conduct is a public wrong, and criminalizing conduct is never justified unless the conduct is a public wrong; (e) the sovereignty principle, according to which the only legitimate restrictions on conduct are those that secure independence. Which, if any, of these principles one should accept is the subject of an extensive and sophisticated academic debate.


Author(s):  
Hanifah Nurus Sopiany

Penalaran matematis menggunakan pola pikir logis dalam menganalisa suatu masalah yang nanti pada akhirnya akan ditandai dengan aktivitas menyimpulkan atas masalah tersebut. Seseorang yang memiliki penalaran yang baik, tentunya akan berhati-hati dalam bertindak dan memutuskan sesuatu. Materi-materi pada kalkulus merupakan materi yang ada pada tingkat sekolah menengah yang nantinya menjadi lahan mengajar mahasiswa calon guru matematika S-1. Kemampuan penalaran yang dikaji mempengaruhi pembelajaran mahasiswa kedepannya karena berlaku pada matakuliah lanjut, contohnya pada kemampuan pembuktian akan selalu digunakan pada matakuliah persamaan diferensial, struktur aljabar, analisis  vektor, analisis real, dll. Sedangkan sebagai calon guru yang nantinya mengajar pada tingkat sekolah menengah, maka kemampuan penalaran ini menjadi salah satu capaian pembelajaran matematika bagi siswa sekolah menengah, maka oleh karena itu guru yang mengajarnya haruslah memiliki kemampuan penalaran yang baik. Analisis kesalahan sangat penting untuk melakukan evaluasi dan refleksi pada struktur soal maupun pada perlakuan dalam pembelajaran dalam upaya memperbaiki kemampuan penalarannya.   Mathematical reasoning uses a logical mindset in analyzing a problem that will eventually be marked by concluding activity on the problem. Someone who has good reason, will certainly be careful in acting and deciding something. The material content on the calculus is the material that exists at the secondary school level which will become the field of teaching the prospective master of math teacher bachelor. The reasoning ability studied influences student learning in the future as it applies to advanced courses, for example in the ability of proof will always be used in the course of differential equations, algebraic structure, vector analysis, real analysis, etc. While as a teacher candidate who will teach at the secondary school level, then this reasoning ability becomes one of the achievements of mathematics learning for high school students, therefore teachers who teach it must have good reasoning ability. Error analysis is very important to evaluate and reflect on the problem structure as well as on the treatment in learning in order to improve the reasoning ability.


2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Sharpe

In his Rhind Lectures of 1879 Joseph Anderson argued for identifying the Monymusk Reliquary, now in the National Museum of Scotland, with the Brecc Bennach, something whose custody was granted to Arbroath abbey by King William in 1211. In 2001 David H. Caldwell called this into question with good reason. Part of the argument relied on different interpretations of the word uexillum, ‘banner’, taken for a portable shrine by William Reeves and for a reliquary used as battle-standard by Anderson. It is argued here that none of this is relevant to the question. The Brecc Bennach is called a banner only as a guess at its long-forgotten nature in two late deeds. The word brecc, however, is used in the name of an extant reliquary, Brecc Máedóc, and Anderson was correct to think this provided a clue to the real nature of the Brecc Bennach. It was almost certainly a small portable reliquary, of unknown provenance but associated with St Columba. The king granted custody to the monks of Arbroath at a time when he was facing a rebellion in Ross, posing intriguing questions about his intentions towards this old Gaelic object of veneration.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 141-146
Author(s):  
LARISA KUDRYAVTSEVA ◽  

The article analyzes various aspects of the institution of alimony obligations between parents and their children, and also establishes some sanctions against law-abiding parents who do not comply with family law. The purpose of the study is to study the features of the legal responsibility of parents who avoid paying alimony in favor of their children for no good reason. The scientific work indicates some of the most important legislative changes in the field of alimony legal relations, which had a positive impact on the legal regulation of this area of family law. The study also suggested some of its own changes to the current legislation.


Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-453
Author(s):  
Kirill Petrov

Abstract The phenomenon of color revolutions has occupied a prominent place in Russian politics for a good reason. The major threat of color revolutions as modern political warfare designed by Western countries deeply affected the political process in Russia since 2005. It may have appeared that the imperative of resisting them was the result of a non-democratic regime reacting to neighboring countries’ uprisings. Some portrayed it as authoritarian learning. This paper suggests that the counteractions stemmed from the interests of disunited Russian elite groups who were seeking opportunities to reinforce their dominance and capitalize on the idea of significant external threats. The phenomenon reshaped the balance within elite groups and led to the consolidation of law enforcement networks on the eve of Putin’s third term. Further, the prevailing perception of color revolutions discouraged any elite splits that could lead to proto-democratic rules.


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