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39The Presumption of Innocence in the Trial SettingRatio Juris 28 (2): 159-179. 2015.The starting frame with which jurors begin trials and the approach which they should take toward the presentation of evidence by the prosecution and defense are distinguished. A robust interpretation of the starting frame, according to which jurors should begin trials by presuming the material innocence of defendants, is defended. Alternative starting frames which are less defendant-friendly are shown to cohere less well with the notion that criminal trials should constitute stern tests of the g…Read more
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37Making Offenders Pay—For the Costs of Their PunishmentSocial Theory and Practice 25 (1): 61-77. 1999.
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37Diminished Opportunities, Diminished CapacitiesSocial Theory and Practice 29 (3): 459-485. 2003.
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36Why persons are the ground of rights (and utility isn't)Journal of Value Inquiry 18 (3): 207-217. 1984.
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36Desert, harm reduction, and moral education: The case for a tortfeasor penaltyRes Publica 9 (2): 127-147. 2003.Those found liable for negligently injuring others are required to compensate them, but current practices permit most tort feasors to spread the costs of their liability burdens through the purchase of insurance. Those found guilty of criminal offences, however, are not allowed to shift the burdens of their sentences onto others. Yet the reasons for not allowing criminal offenders to shift such burdens – harm reduction, retribution, and moral education – also appear to retain some force in relat…Read more
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34Retributivism and Victim CompensationSocial Theory and Practice 46 (2): 317-338. 2020.Given the desert-centric character of retributive penal theory, it seems odd that its supporters rarely discuss the undeserved losses and suffering of crime victims and the state’s role in responding to them. This asymmetry in the desert-focus of retributive penal theory is examined and the likely arguments in support of it are found wanting. Particular attention is paid to the claim that offenders, rather than the state, should supply compensation to victims. Also, standard retributive accounts…Read more
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34Criminal record, character evidence, and the criminal trial*: Richard L. LippkeLegal Theory 14 (3): 167-191. 2008.The question addressed here is whether evidence concerning defendants' past criminal records should be introduced at their trials because such evidence reveals their character and thus reveals whether they are the kinds of persons likely to have committed the crimes with which they are currently charged. I strongly caution against the introduction of such evidence for a number of reasons. First, the link between defendants' past criminal records and claims about their standing dispositions to th…Read more
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29Two Ways of Thinking About the Value of Deserved PunishmentThe Journal of Ethics 23 (4): 387-406. 2019.Numerous retributivists hold that deserved punishment has intrinsic value. A number of puzzles regarding that claim are identified and discussed. An alternative, more Kantian account of intrinsic value is then identified and the ways in which legal punishment might be understood to cohere with it are explored. That account focuses on the various ways in which legal punishment might be persons-respecting. It is then argued that this Kantian account enables us to solve or evade the puzzles generat…Read more
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28Chronic Temptation, Reasonable Firmness and the Criminal LawOxford Journal of Legal Studies 34 (1): 75-96. 2014.The criminal law requires citizens to demonstrate ‘reasonable firmness’ in the face of temptations to violate its provisions. But what if individuals repeatedly face powerful temptations to offend, are not responsible for being in such predicaments, cannot escape them, and cannot alter or expunge their desires because they count as urgent on any plausible account of a decent human life? Should the criminal law make some sort of allowance for the chronically tempted? I argue that it should, becau…Read more
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27Remorse, Dialogue, and SentencingCriminal Law and Philosophy 16 (3): 611-630. 2022.After surveying the many practical difficulties sentencing judges must confront in determining whether the offenders who appear before them are genuinely remorseful, recent dialogical accounts of remorse-based sentence reductions are examined. These accounts depend on a morally communicative approach to legal punishment’s justification and seem to confine such communication to offenders. They contend that, in order to respect remorseful offenders, sentencing judges must reduce their sentences. W…Read more
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24Setting the Terms of the Business Responsibility DebateSocial Theory and Practice 11 (3): 355-370. 1985.
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24Liora Lazarus, Contrasting Prisoners’ Rights: A Comparative Examination of Germany and England: Oxford University Press, Hardback, £38.50, ISBN 0:1-99-25983-6 (review)Criminal Law and Philosophy 1 (1): 123-125. 2007.
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24Legal Punishment and the Public Identification of OffendersRes Publica 24 (2): 199-216. 2018.In the United States, the identities of criminal offenders are matters of public record, accessible to prospective employers, the press, and ordinary citizens. In European countries, the identities of offenders are routinely kept hidden, with some exceptions. The question addressed in this discussion concerns whether the public disclosure of the identities of offenders is part and parcel of their legal punishment. My contentions are that public disclosure is not conceptually part of legal punish…Read more
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21Rethinking ImprisonmentOxford University Press. 2007.This book draws upon philosophical arguments, criminological evidence, and legal literature on prisoners' rights and sentencing to explore the restrictions and deprivations that can be legitimately imposed on serious offenders in the name of punishment.
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20Punishment, Public Safety, and Collateral Legal ConsequencesJournal of Applied Philosophy. forthcoming.What are termed the ‘collateral legal consequences’ (or CLCs) of criminal conviction have been defended in a variety of ways. The focus in this article is on efforts to justify the burdens and restrictions they involve as nonpenal measures designed to secure public safety. Zachary Hoskins' careful defense of such public‐safety CLCs is utilized as a point of departure. Although it is granted that such measures might be defensible, the many complications and problems of ensuring that they do not a…Read more
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20Victim‐Centered RetributivismPacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2): 127-145. 2003.Critics charge that retributivists fail to show why the state should concern itself with ensuring that criminal offenders are punished in accordance with their ill deserts. Drawing on the notion that the state should attempt to equalize the realization of the interests designated by rights, it is argued that legal punishment restores the equality of condition, disrupted by criminal conduct, that all citizens are entitled to. While this equality of condition might be restored in various ways, it …Read more
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19The Rationality of the Egoist’s Half-Way HouseSouthern Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 515-528. 1987.
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18The Disenfranchisement of FelonsLaw and Philosophy 20 (6): 553-580. 2001.After discussing the interests that ground theright to democratic political participation,arguments for the disenfranchisement of thosewho commit serious criminal offenses areexamined. The arguments are divided into twogroups. The first group consists of argumentsthat are relatively independent of thejustifying aims of punishment. It is concededthat two of these arguments establish thatsome, though by no means all, serious offendersshould lose the vote for a period of time thatdoes not necessari…Read more
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16Against SupermaxJournal of Applied Philosophy 21 (2): 109-124. 2004.abstract Supermax prisons subject inmates to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for extended periods of time. Crime reduction and retributive arguments in favour of supermax confinement are elaborated. Both types of arguments are shown to falter once the logic of the two approaches to the justification of legal punishment is made clear and evidence about the effects of supermax confinement on inmates is considered. It is also argued that many criminal offenders suffer from defects in thei…Read more
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12Radical Business EthicsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1995.Arguing against most scholars of business ethics who have articulated a set of moral principles and applied them to problems faced by business people, Richard Lippke steers away from offering moral directives. In Radical Business Ethics, he develops a more comprehensive perspective on business issues that is tied to larger questions of social justice. Analyzing a select group of timely issues such as advertising, employee privacy, and insider trading in the context of debates about the nature of…Read more
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10Plea BargainingIn Hugh LaFollette (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Blackwell. 2013.
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8The Minimal State and Indigent DefenseCriminal Justice Ethics 35 (1): 1-20. 2016.Very few scholars discuss the moral basis of the right of persons accused of crimes to be supplied with attorneys if they cannot afford them. More discussion of the topic is needed, in particular because political theorists who prefer a minimal state deny that indigent persons have such a moral right. This article addresses their contentions by developing three arguments for supplying poor persons accused of crimes with defense attorneys. First, doing so will prevent state officials from becomin…Read more
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7Government Support of Labor Unions and the Ban on Striker ReplacementsBusiness and Society Review 109 (2): 127-151. 2004.
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5Five Concerns Regarding the Commercialization of LeisureBusiness and Society Review 106 (2): 107-126. 2001.
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2The Rationality of the egoist's Half‐Way HouseSouthern Journal of Philosophy 25 (4): 515-528. 1987.
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Punishing the guilty, not punishing the innocentIn Thom Brooks (ed.), Law and Legal Theory, Brill. 2013.