Perspectives on Punishment

Punishment seems to be one of the most venerable and universal of moral impulses and social practices. It is central to law and jurisprudence, but it also exists beyond law: within the self; in relationships between individuals; inside families and communities. No single discipline circumscribes the subject of punishment, although it belongs to the matter of most disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. This collection of essays by jurists, philosophers, historians, a literary scholar, and a psychoanalyst explores elemental questions of punishment: cultural and psychological roots; justifications and their validity; legal formulations and enactments, crises in contemporary practice.

Autorentext

The Editor: Richard Mowery Andrews (D. Phil Oxon.) is a former Senior Mellon Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Department of History of Columbia University. He has published numerous essays on the French Revolution and is the author of Law, Magistracy and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735-1789.

Inhalt

Contents: Brian McKnight: Punishment in Traditional China: From Family, to Group, to the State - Bernard Weiss: Punishment, Retribution and Justice in Islamic Theology and Jurisprudence - Edward Peters: Juristic Theology? Medieval and Early Modern European Perspectives on Crime and Punishment - Richard Mowery Andrews: The Death Penalty in Old Regime France - Steven Marcus: Dickens and the Representation of Punishment - Robert Alan Glick: Dreading and Desiring Punishment: On Morality and Masochism - Lois G. Forer: A Trial Judge's View of Moral, Constitutional and Conventional Justifications for Punishment - Jeffrie G. Murphy: Getting Even: The Role of the Victim - Nigel Walker: Just Deserts or Just Desertion? An Attack on Modern Retributivism - Nicola Lacey: Punishment: A Communitarian Approach.