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## Criminal law
(sep-criminal-law)
Punitive view: that the sole function of criminal law is to deliver
justified punishment for crimes. This is generally accepted to some
degree.
Criminal law's function is responding to crime: calling offenders to
account for criminal activity. Can have value without punishment. No
arbitrary punishment, but rather proof of guilt in a court.
Community:
More importantly, one might claim that in the case of paradigmatic
crimes—like robbery, rape, or battery—criminal law responds to
wrongs on behalf of particular individuals—on behalf of those who
have been robbed, raped, or battered. On this view, a positive
case for criminalization need not await the finding that 𝐷 owes
something to the whole community. It is at least sometimes enough
that 𝐷 owes something to those 𝐷 has wronged, which 𝐷 would fail
to provide in the absence of criminal proceedings.
Preventing wrongdoing: potentially flawed. Reference prohibition.
## How much law is there
But the question of time is not the only difficulty. If you demand my
assent to any proposition, it is necessary that the proposition should be
stated simply and clearly. So numerous are the varieties of human
understanding, in all cases where its independence and integrity are
sufficiently preserved, that there is little chance of any two men coming
to a precise agreement, about ten successive propositions that are in their
own nature open to debate. What then can be more absurd, than to
present to me the laws of England in fifty volumes folio, and call upon
me to give an honest and uninfluenced vote upon their contents?
But the social contract, considered as the foundation of civil
government, requires of me more than this. I am not only obliged to
consent to all the laws that are actually upon record, but to all the laws
that shall hereafter be made. It was under this view of the subject that
Rousseau, in tracing the consequences of the social contract, was led to
assert that “the great body of the people in whom the sovereign
authority resides can neither delegate nor resign it. The essence of that
authority,” he adds, “is the general will; and will cannot be represented.
It must either be the same or another; there is no alternative. The
deputies of the people cannot be its representatives; they are merely its
attorneys. The laws which the community does not ratify in person, are
no laws, are nullities.”[iii]
## JS Mill :: harm principle
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were
of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing
that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing
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