 Do Unjust States Have the Standing to Blame? Three Reservations About ScepticismBenjamin Ewing Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 2023, vol. 43, issue 2, 249-272 Abstract: If an offender was treated unjustly by her state in a way that curtailed her options or otherwise made it more likely she would commit her crime, does her state have the moral standing to blame her for that crime? Many theorists have expressed scepticism that the state does. I present three reservations about such scepticism. First, much of it appears to derive its intuitive appeal from problems with the content of state condemnation that can be solved by changing its content rather than its source. Second, adequate legal recognition of everyone’s fundamental moral rights arguably requires not merely the proscription of violations of those rights, but authoritative public condemnation of such violations, which only the state is capable of supplying. Finally, an unjust state would not do disadvantaged offenders any favours by holding its tongue—nor would such offenders help themselves by closing their ears to its criticism. Keywords: standing to blame; complicity; criminogenic injustice; disadvantaged offenders; hard treatment; condemnation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxjlsj:v:43:y:2023:i:2:p:249-272. Access Statistics for this article Oxford Journal of Legal Studies is currently edited by Liz Fisher, Stefan Enchelmaier, Andreas Televantos, Liora Lazarus and Jennifer Payne More articles in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies from Oxford University Press |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.