Thom Brooks

Restorative justice is highly promising as an effective approach to better supporting victims, reducing reoffending, and lowering costs. The challenge it faces is a dual hurdle of limited applicability and lack of public confidence. The issue is how we might better embed restorative justice in the criminal justice system so its promising effectiveness could be shared more widely while increasing public confidence. This chapter explores the new approach of punitive restoration, which gives more tools for restoration including a wider punitive element. Its goal is to win support for greater use of restorative practices and a less punitive criminal justice system overall.

The steep rise in small boat crossings across the English Channel is deeply worrying. Ever more lives are put at risk in making the 21-mile journey. Human trafficking gangs trade in human misery. The UK’s asylum system is put under additional strain and at ever higher cost to taxpayers. The public has lost trust in the Government to put this right. In order to address the problem, we must understand it and grasp its underlying causes. A key issue is that the Government did not see the problem of small boat crossings as a consequence of its policy failures, most notably its failure to secure a post-Brexit returns arrangement with the EU. An effective plan to deal with small boat crossings is urgently needed to win back public confidence, to save lives, to improve our asylum system and help put illegal human traffickers out of business. This Report is an attempt to outline such a plan with over a dozen recommendations.

Deterrence is a theory which claims that punishment is justified through preventing future crimes, and is one of the oldest and most powerful theories about punishment. This volume brings together the leading work on deterrence from the dominant international figures in the field. Deterrence is examined from various critical perspectives, including its diversity, relation with desert, the relation of deterrence with incapacitation and prevention, the role deterrence has played in debates over the death penalty, and deterrence and corporate crime.

What is a crime? A common answer is that crimes are harms. One particular argument is that morality forms the connection between crimes and harms: crimes are not any kind of harm, but specifically a kind of immorality. This position is consistent with natural law jurisprudence which claims that law and morality are inseparably linked. It is also consistent with standard defences of retribution whereby punishment is justified where deserved and to the degree deserved. Retributivist desert is present for individuals that possess some degree of moral responsibility for causing or attempting to cause evil. For example, the murderer deserves severe punishment because he is morally responsible for another person’s death and this act is sufficiently evil to warrant severe punishment. The idea that crimes are harms to morals — and so their immorality informs their criminality and the corresponding severity of punishment — has also found favour with so-called ‘expressivist’ theories of punishment defended by Joel Feinberg, Antony Duff and others. These theories argue that punishment has an expressivist function of communication public disapproval to criminal offenders for their moral wrongdoings where punishment is proportionate to immorality. The justification of crimes as harms to morals is part of a venerable tradition that has come to be increasingly seen as discredited. Most academics working in law (and even more practising lawyers) reject natural law jurisprudence and support some version of the separability thesis of legal positivism where law and morality are held to be separable, but not intrinsically and necessarily linked. Yet, curiously, retributivist theories, including expressivism, have been on the ascendency with a growing number of legal philosophers defending the idea of crimes as harms to morals and, therefore, moving in a contrary direction to most others working in law and academic law. I believe this general position is deeply problematic and should be rejected. This chapter focuses specifically on expressivist theories as the increasingly more popular variant of retributivism in academic circles today. The next section provides an overview of expressivism. The following sections argue that it is not compelling both as a view about the criminal law, but also as a theory about punishment. I close the chapter with ideas about criminal harms might be better understood. I argue that crimes might be a kind of harm, but not the kinds of harm endorsed by retributivists and, more specifically, expressivists.

John Rawls argues that A Theory of Justice suffers from a “serious problem”: the problem of political stability. His theory failed to account for the reality that citizens are deeply divided by reasonable and incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral comprehensive doctrines. This fact of reasonable pluralism may pose a threat to political stability over time and requires a solution. Rawls proposes the idea of an overlapping consensus among incompatible comprehensive doctrines through the use of public reasons in his later Political Liberalism. Rawls’s proposed solution to the problem of political stability has received much criticism. Some, such as Kurt Baier, Brian Barry, George Klosko, and Edward McClennen, argue that an overlapping consensus is relatively unnecessary. Rawls should have acknowledged existing resources in his account that might secure political stability over time without major changes to his original views about justice. Others, including Kent Greenawalt, Michael Sandel, Leif Wenar, and Iris Marion Young believe that an overlapping consensus is too fragile to secure political stability. Rawls correctly identifies a major problem for his original account, but he fails to provide a satisfactory solution. I believe these objections rest on a mistake easily overlooked. Each objection claims that, for Rawls, the possibility of future political stability is to be guaranteed by an overlapping consensus alone. This perspective fails to recognize the central importance of the social minimum in securing political stability. There is, in fact, more resources to secure political stability than Rawls or his critics have recognized. My discussion will begin with a brief explanation of why the problem of political stability raises an important challenge to Rawls’s views on justice and why he argues for an overlapping consensus as a solution to it. I will next consider the more important objections to Rawls’s solution and why these fail. I will argue that the social minimum might better support political stability if it is broadly understood in terms of the capabilities approach. This approach is compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism and it provides a more robust understanding of a just social minimum. Political stability does not rely upon an overlapping consensus alone — and it may be better secured where the capabilities approach plays a more central role. Therefore, Rawls does provide a illuminating solution to the problem of political stability that is more compelling if we incorporate the capabilities approach into political liberalism.

Political theory matters. But why? Unfortunately, this simple claim about the importance of political theory may be controversial. This is because it runs contrary to what we might call a common misconception dominant in many informal circles that real world impact is the stuff of other sub-disciplines in political science and not made to order for political theorists. If we search for examples of politics as practiced, then too often an orthodox perspective for many political scientists is that theorists are expected to always come up short. One implication is that this orthodox view favours those sub-disciplines believed to offer some contribution to politics as practiced above the perceived importance of political theorists to politics as understood. This contributes to a significant challenge for political theory. The perceived inability to contribute substantially to politics as practiced is not only a belief about political theory’s failure to engage with politics on the ground, but can undermine the one domain theorists are thought to have relevance, namely, to our understanding of politics if only abstractly. Some might argue: if political theorists cannot engage with the world and change it, then does political theory even matter? This exceptionalism about political theory has additional negative effects. The launch of the so-called ‘impact agenda’ in British higher education is a recent example. The concern is that political theory is by its nature abstract and often thought to be substantially impractical. Political theorists more readily apply themselves to the consideration of ideas, but not always their relation to practices. The problem is that it has become more common to require evidence of research impact in funding applications and research assessments of departments. Political theorists are disadvantaged by this development and the impact agenda may threaten its future. In fact, this orthodox view is not only shared widely by most non-political theorists, but even by many political theorists, too. The orthodox view rests on a deep misunderstanding about the relation between ideas and practices. Political theorists can – and often do – affect practice. I offer a defence of political theory and its impact in this contribution. I will argue that the primary obstacle for political theorists is overcoming scepticism about the kind of impact theorists may offer. The issue is not about whether political theorists create impact, but rather the kinds of impact we should expect from political theorists. This chapter present the impact that political theory has made and the opportunities for future work. It will consider the contributions made by leading political theorists to policy debates, the lessons learned from their successes, and how political theorists might further pursue existing and new opportunities to develop impact. The discussion will close with consideration of several potential threats that theorists should become more aware of in order to best avoid them. Political theorists should welcome – and not oppose – recent trends towards demonstrating impact because theorists (and perhaps the wider discipline of political science) can benefit.

Deryck Beyleveld has forged a theory of ethical rationalism that has made an important impact on legal and moral philosophy—that this collection of essays makes clear. He has not only refined and improved the original account developed by Alan Gewirth, but provides us with ethical rationalism’s most prolific defender today. One area of particular insight is Beyleveld’s many applications of ethical rationalism to practice and, most especially, to medical law and ethics which has been especially influential. This work has set the bar for all proponents and critics alike. We focus narrowly on a specific concern that we have with ethical rationalism: its primacy of rationality over other characteristics, such as our emotions. This is not to deny the importance of reason in our thinking about law and ethical concerns. But we have concerns with any view that holds that reason is the only key to how any tensions should be resolved. Such a position claims for reason a privileged status it does not have or merit. One problem for us is that, in our view, ethical rationalism does not appear to adequately consider the importance of emotions and so it does not provide a satisfactory account of law and morality as a result. We examine this concern in the first part of our chapter. This chapter’s second part raises concerns with the application of ethical rationalism as a model for understanding sexual offences. We highlight both the need to foreground emotion in order to understand the current law, as well as the dangers from a normative perspective of appearing to marginalise the role of emotion in sexual offences. Not only would a prioritisation of rationality fail to reflect the role emotion can play in current rape law, but we would argue, is particularly problematic in this area of law in terms of promoting justice. In summary, Beyleveld’s ethical rationalism exercises an important impact on legal theory and legal practices. Nonetheless, we raise some reservations about its connection to these impacts that lead us to support revisions to this approach.

World leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond have declared that multiculturalism has failed. They agree that multicultural pluralism promotes division and undermines the solidarity required by any community for long-term cohesion. They are wrong, but the problem of securing cohesion is real. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right offers crucial insights into how the alienation endemic in modernity can be overcome through reconciliation and stakeholding. This analysis shows how multicultural pluralism can be achieved and promoted without sacrificing solidarity.

This new second edition of Punishment includes a revised and expanded defence of the groundbreaking unified theory of punishment that brings together elements of retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation into a new coherent framework. Thom Brooks expands the chapter length case studies from capital punishment, juvenile offending, domestic violence and sex crimes to include new chapters on social media offences and corporate liability addressing some of today's most pressing issues in criminal justice.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) developed a philosophy based on freedom within a wider philosophical system offering novel views on topics ranging from property and punishment to morality and the state. Hegel’s main work was the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (“PR”) first published in 1821. Many of his other major works include discussions or analyses connected to his social and political philosophy. He also wrote various political essays during his career, many of which have been translated (Hegel 1999). His work has been a major influence on significant figures from Karl Marx to Charles Taylor and beyond. This entry provides an overview about how Hegel’s ideas have been debated and the core contributions from his PR followed by further readings.

Trust is essential for our democracy. We trust our political leaders and institutions to put the public interest before their personal or partisan advantage. We trust each other to work and live together. No system is perfect and there is rarely one right answer to the big challenges faced, but we expect leaders to be honest, competent and compassionate – and punish any breaches harshly in the polls or the ballot box. But not any longer. Now is a time of political crisis that’s fuelled by a lack of trust in government and the mainstream. This carries significant and damaging consequences for the future of our democracy fragmenting and polarising our communities. While election results from Brexit to Trump shocked political pundits on both sides of the Atlantic, the roots of an alienated and divided public who increasingly do not trust public figures to put the public interest first have root causes that run deep. The absence of trust creates a political shift akin to a new kind of revolution putting at risk our democracy’s future health. Awareness and action have never been needed more urgently. For over two decades, Thom Brooks has been a leading voice in exposing this crisis in trust and challenging its foundations. This provocative collection of new and recent reflections brings together his work as a freelance columnist and essayist covering Brexit, British values, citizenship and immigration, Scotland’s independence referendum, tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, education policy and legal reform. These essays highlight his substantial contributions to some of the leading political issues of our day. How deep is our current crisis – and what can we do about it to rebuild trust in our politicians, public institutions and each other? Brooks provides clear insights into these issues and more with his ‘realistic optimism’ for the future and why we can be the solution to our political crisis.

How many questions could you answer in a pub quiz about British values? Designed to ensure new migrants have accepted British values and integrated, the UK's citizenship test is often portrayed as a bad pub quiz with answers few citizens know. With the launch of a new post-Brexit immigration system, this is a critical time to change the test. Thom Brooks draws on first-hand experience of taking the test, and interviews with key figures including past Home Secretaries, to expose the test as ineffective and a barrier to citizenship. This accessible guide offers recommendations for transforming the citizenship test into a 'bridge to citizenship' which fosters greater inclusion and integration.

Climate change confronts us with our most pressing challenges today. The global consensus is clear that human activity is mostly to blame for its harmful effects, but there is disagreement about what should be done. While no shortage of proposals from ecological footprints and the polluter pays principle to adaptation technology and economic reforms, each offers a solution – but is climate change a problem we can solve? In this provocative new book, these popular proposals for ending or overcoming the threat of climate change are shown to offer no easy escape and each rest on an important mistake. Thom Brooks argues that a future environmental catastrophe is an event we can only delay or endure, but not avoid. This raises new ethical questions about how we should think about climate change. How should we reconceive sustainability without a status quo? Why is action more urgent and necessary than previously thought? What can we do to motivate and inspire hope? Many have misunderstood the kind of problem that climate change presents – as well as the daunting challenges we must face and overcome. Climate Change Ethics for an Endangered World is a critical guide on how we can better understand the fragile world around us before it is too late. This innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, climate justice, environmental policy and environmental ethics. "This book offers a rare combination of tough-mindedness, analytic rigor, and passion as it tackles the greatest challenge of our time―climate change. For Brooks, it’s past time to acknowledge that climate change cannot be solved though the careful selection of good polices. Climate change is an unavoidable tragedy that we must endure but may be able to survive. Offering a program that emphasizes flexibility and adaptation, Brooks brings original insights to a debate that too long has been bogged down in wishful thinking and empty scholasticism." Professor Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago's Law School.

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many more are examined in this highly engaging and accessible guide. Punishment (2nd edition) is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment, offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. The first comprehensive critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishments, this book explores – among others – retribution, the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice and the unified theory of punishment. Thom Brooks applies these theories to several case studies in detail, including capital punishment, juvenile offending and domestic violence. Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and ground-breaking. This second edition has extensive revisions and updates to all chapters, including an all-new chapter on the unified theory substantively redrafted and new chapters on cyber-crimes and social media as well as corporate crimes. Punishment is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, criminal justice, criminology, justice studies, law, political science and sociology. "Lucid, fair-minded, and well-informed, Thom Brooks’ Punishment offers a superb introduction to a complex and contentious subject. Many a perplexed student will find illumination in his patient discussion of each of the leading theories. The way Brooks shows their interconnectedness and application in practice – to capital punishment, juvenile offenders, domestic violence, and the like – will interest not only students but scholars as well." ―Stuart P. Green, Distinguished Professor of Law and Nathan L. Jacobs Scholar, Rutgers School of Law "As a topic in moral and political philosophy, punishment has been jolted back to life. In the last quarter century, retribution has returned with a vengeance, both in the theoretical literature and (with a very different emphasis) in public policy. The rise of the victim as a player in the criminal justice system has also fuelled a counter-trend, placing an emphasis on redress. Human rights, privatization, globalization, the rise of the therapist, the lobbyist, the terrorist: all have affected our ways of punishing and of thinking about punishment. A new survey of the terrain is overdue. And who better to conduct it than Thom Brooks, whose grasp of the literature and feel for the issues is second to none? From the noble ideals of ‘communicative’ theory to the grim realities of children in prison: in Punishment Brooks covers it all with insight, rigour, and energy." ―John Gardner, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Oxford "Thom Brooks has produced a valuable introduction to, and critical survey of, current theoretical approaches to punishment together with an analysis of their implications for practice. In addition, he has provided a spirited defence of a new, unified theory inspired by the British Idealists and encompassing retributive, consequentialist, and restorative elements. Written in a lucid and engaging style, the book will interest a wide range of readers – students, theorists of punishment, as well as those engaged in criminal justice policy." ―Alan Brudner, Albert Abel Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto.

This compelling new book engages leading theorists to consider how cultivating emotions can impact on social justice. Although the presence of political emotions can appear counterproductive to stability and peace, there is an increasing recognition that emotions can be harnessed to empower community cohesion and social justice. Covering such key issues as adaptive preferences, capabilities, civil religion, compassion, conscience, dignity, feminism, imagination, multicultural citizenship, perfectionism, political liberalism, public sentiments, sympathy, Political Emotions challenges readers to explore the role emotions can and should play in our modern society – and at a time when new ideas about how to foster a decent public sphere and overcome intolerance are urgently needed. Drawing particularly on the work of Martha C. Nussbaum, and including a chapter giving her personal response to the issues raised in the individual essays, this is a fascinating read for all of those interested in social and political philosophy today.

This article explores the relationship between capabilities and political liberalism. There are two views about how they might be compatible: Sen claims capabilities should be seen as a revision of primary goods while Nussbaum argues capabilities should form part of an overlapping consensus. It is argued they are both right—and incorrect. Whereas Sen identifies where compatibility might best be found, it is Nussbaum’s conception of capabilities that is able to overcome Rawls’s objections to Sen’s proposal. This provides a new third way of conceiving how capabilities and political liberalism might address these concerns that is more compelling for how Sen and Nussbaum claim. The two rivals can come together, but not in the way that either of its most well known champions have argued.

This article argues political liberalism can and should be revised to improve its relevance to the private law. This approach is not a rejection of political liberalism, but instead a restatement consistent with the fundamental tenets of Rawls’s theory of justice. The first part begins with a brief summary of Rawls’s political liberalism. The second part discusses the strategies used to demonstrate the relevance of Rawls’s theory to the private law. The third part examines how Rawls’s theory can and should be revised by incorporating capabilities. I argue this revision can be undertaken in a way that best develops the relevance of political liberalism.

The orthodox position in global justice is to consider questions about international distributive justice from a perspective of what duties, if any, affluent states have towards people in severe poverty. The debate has focused on whether positive or negative duties are most relevant and how they should be applied. This article challenges this orthodoxy by defending stakeholder theory as a promising new approach overcoming limitations in current debates through promotion of the virtue of stakeholders having a say where they have a stake.

Hegel’s project of reconciliation is central to his Philosophy of Right. This article argues that scholars have understood this project in one of two ways, as a form of rational reconciliation or a kind of endorsement. Each is incomplete and their inability to capture the kind of reconciliation Hegel has in mind is made apparent when we consider the kind of problem that the rabble creates for modern society, which reconciliation is meant to address. The article concludes that more than mutual recognition is required and we should recognise the crucial role played by stakeholding, whereby citizens share a principled conviction about oneself and others.

This article argues political liberalism can and should be revised to improve its relevance to the private law. This approach is not a rejection of political liberalism, but instead a restatement consistent with the fundamental tenets of Rawls's theory of justice. The first part begins with a brief summary of Rawls's political liberalism. The second part discusses the strategies used to demonstrate the relevance of Rawls's theory to the private law. The third part examines how Rawls's theory can and should be revised by incorporating capabilities. I argue this revision can be undertaken in a way that best develops the relevance of political liberalism.

Nearly every major philosophy, from Plato to Hegel and beyond, has argued that democracy is an inferior form of government, at best. Yet, virtually every contemporary political philosophy working today endorses democracy in one variety or another. Should we conclude then that the traditional canon is meaningless for helping us theorise about a just state? In this paper, I will take up the criticisms and positive proposals of two such canonical figures in political philosophy: Plato and Hegel. At first glance, each is rather disdainful, if not outright hostile, to democracy. This is also how both have been represented traditionally. However, if we look behind the reasons for their rejection of (Athenian) democracy and the reasons behind their alternatives to democracy, I believe we can uncover a new theory of government that does two things. First, it maps onto the so-called Schumpeterian tradition of elite theories of democracy quite well. Second, perhaps surprisingly, it actually provides an improved justification for democratic government as we practice it today than rival theories of democracy. Thus, not only are Plato and Hegel not enemies of modern democratic thought after all, but each is actually quite useful for helping us develop democratic theory in a positive, not negative, manner.