Thom Brooks

One of the most controversial aspects of legal philosophy concerns the justification of specific punishments for particular criminal violations. Surprisingly, there has not been any attempt to arrive systematically at any conclusive formula for deriving correct punishments. This article aspires to fulfil this urgent need. I shall examine (1) retributive, (2) consequentialist, (3) reformative, and (4) deterrent punishments in an attempt to derive general equations. It is my wish that by contributing a general formula for each theory we might have a new perspective for comparison. This article finds that the contestability of ascertaining the most appropriate punishment for a criminal is in large part a product of the unstable foundations each penal theory rests on. In addition, almost every variety of penal theories relies on assumptions about criminal culpability, grounded in implicit intentionality. Thus, the contestability of choosing correct punishments to ‘fit’ different crimes is primarily dependent upon the best judgement of judicial officers, not on empirical ‘facts’.

The problem of global poverty has reached terrifying proportions. Since the end of the Cold War, ordinary deaths from starvation and preventable diseases amount to approximately 250 million people, most of them children. Thomas Pogge argues that wealthy states have a responsibility to help those in severe poverty. This responsibility arises from the foreseeable and avoidable harm the current global institutional order has perpetrated on poor states. Pogge demands that wealthy states eradicate global poverty not merely because they have the resources, but because they share responsibility for its continuation. For Pogge, global poverty is more than a wrong imposed on the poor: it is a violation of human rights and a crime. In this paper, I critically examine Pogge's claim that global poverty is a crime. My aim is to demonstrate that Pogge's conclusions do not follow from his arguments. That is, if affluent states have a negative duty to assist those in severe poverty, their duty is not absolute because they are not fully responsible for this poverty. Moreover, if global poverty is one of the greatest crimes against humanity, then it seems inappropriate at best to champion proposals, pace Pogge, that lets the guilty parties walk free.

Global justice is an exciting area of refreshing, innovative new ideas for a changing world facing significant challenges. Not only does work in this area often force us to rethink about ethics and political philosophy more generally, but its insights contain seeds of hope for addressing some of the greatest global problems facing humanity today. The Oxford Handbook of Global Justice has been selective in bringing together some of the most pressing topics and issues in global justice as understood by the leading voices from both established and rising stars across twenty-five new chapters. This Handbook explores severe poverty, climate change, egalitarianism, global citizenship, human rights, immigration, territorial rights, and much more.

In both Great Britain and the United States there has been a growing debate about the modern acceptability of jury nullification. Properly understood, juries do not have any constitutional right to ignore the law, but they do have the power to do so nevertheless. Juries that nullify may be motivated by a variety of concerns: too harsh sentences, improper government action, racism, etc. In this article, I shall attempt to defend jury nullification on a number of grounds. First, I discuss the use of general verdicts and reject their replacement in criminal trials by special verdicts. Second, I examine verdicts based upon mistakes and racial prejudice, turning my attention to perverse verdicts and the question of whether or not juries are guilty of legislating when nullifying the law. Finally, I look at the problem of the awarding of excessive damages by juries. My goal will be to provide a sound theoretical defence of the practice of jury nullification

Perhaps one of the most underappreciated philosophical movements is British Idealism. This movement arose during the latter half of the nineteenth century and began to wane after the outbreak of the First World War. British Idealism has produced a number of important figures, such as Bernard Bosanquet, R. G. Collingwood, F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green, as well as other important, but less well known, figures, such as J. S. Mackenzie, John Henry Muirhead and James Seth. It has also given us a number of lasting philosophical ideas.

In this journal, Michael Clark defends a "A Non-Retributive Kantian Approach to Punishment". I argue that both Kant's and Rawls's theories of punishment are retributivist to some extent. It may then be slightly misleading to say that by following the views of Kant and Rawls, in particular, as Clark does, we can develop a nonretributivist theory of punishment. This matter is further complicated by the fact Clark nowhere addresses Rawls's views on punishment: Rawls endorses a mixed theory combining retributive and utilitarian features. Of those discussed by Clark, only Scanlon defends the use of nonretributivist punishments. Yet, here too Clark nowhere addresses Scanlon's views on punishment. Thus, Clark's views on retributive punishment are highly problematic.

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent convinces Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of Conscience, which she does and shares with Adam. Adam and Eve act in contravention to God’s orders against eating fruit from the tree. Traditional interpretations have suggested that this event—commonly referred to as “the Fall”—is an event where the serpent lied to Eve and that it was entirely negative. Instead, I argue that the serpent was correct to say, in fact, that in eating thisfruit we would become closer to God. The Fall reveals a new mystery to us of God’s love for us and a blessing in disguise.