•  12
    Editors’ Introduction
    Social Philosophy Today 34 1-4. 2018.
  •  21
    Public Reason and the Justification of Punishment
    Criminal Justice Ethics 41 (2): 121-41. 2022.
    Chad Flanders has argued that retributivism is inconsistent with John Rawls’s core notion of public reason, which sets out those considerations on which legitimate exercises of state power can be based. Flanders asserts that retributivism is grounded in claims about which people can reasonably disagree and are thus not suitable grounds for public policy. This essay contends that Rawls’s notion of public reason does not provide a basis for rejecting retributivist justifications of punishment. I a…Read more
  •  17
    Collateral Legal Consequences and Criminal Sentencing
    American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (2): 117-130. 2023.
    A criminal conviction can trigger numerous burdensome legal consequences beyond the formal sentence. Some charge that these “collateral” legal consequences (CLCs) constitute additional measures of punishment, which raises the further question of whether judges should consider these CLCs when making sentencing decisions, reducing the formal sentence in proportion to the severity of the CLCs the defendant will face. The idea that all CLCs constitute forms of punishment reflects a particular concep…Read more
  •  3
    It is common practice in the United Kingdom, the United States, and other common law countries to reduce criminal sentences in response to guilty pleas. This chapter contends that this practice violates the commonly accepted prohibiton on punishment of the innocent. I first consider various interpretations of what this prohibition requires of a system of punishment. Then I contend that insofar as sentence reductions provide significant prudential incentives to innocent people to plead guilty, th…Read more
  •  9
    Punishment's Burdens on the Innocent
    Journal of Applied Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Critics of state punishment have frequently pointed out that its imposition sometimes involves the infliction of burdens on innocent people: namely, those falsely convicted of crimes and punished. Punishment also creates significant burdens for innocent children and other dependents of those punished (social stigma, financial stress, direct abuse, and so on). But these burdens on innocents have received much less philosophical attention than the burdens created for the falsely convicted. This ar…Read more
  • Justice: social, criminal, juvenile (edited book)
    Published on behalf of the North American Society for Social Philosophy by the Philosophy Documentation Center. 2018.
    This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 34th International Social Philosophy Conference (2017), an annual event sponsored by the North American Society for Social Philosophy. The theme of the conference was "Justice: Social, Criminal, Juvenile"; this volume invites wider discussion of the issues explored at the conference.
  •  2
    Introduction
    Social Philosophy Today 38 1-4. 2022.
  •  10
    Public Reason and the Justification of Punishment
    Criminal Justice Ethics 41 (2): 121-141. 2022.
    Chad Flanders has argued that retributivism is inconsistent with John Rawls’s core notion of public reason, which sets out those considerations on which legitimate exercises of state power can be based. Flanders asserts that retributivism is grounded in claims about which people can reasonably disagree and are thus not suitable grounds for public policy. This essay contends that Rawls’s notion of public reason does not provide a basis for rejecting retributivist justifications of punishment. I a…Read more
  •  1
    Anger and Punishment
    In Court D. Lewis & Gregory L. Bock (eds.), The Ethics of Anger. pp. 227-49. 2020.
  •  3
  •  1
    Against Incapacitative Punishment
    In Jan de Keijser, Julian Roberts & Jesper Ryberg (eds.), Predictive Sentencing: Normative and Empirical Perspectives. pp. 89-105. 2019.
  •  11
    Editors' Introduction
    Social Philosophy Today 36 1-6. 2020.
  •  10
    Introduction
    Social Philosophy Today 33 1-5. 2017.
  •  28
    "This collection is the first book-length examination of the various epistemological issues underlying legal trials. Trials are, among other things, centrally concerned with determining truth: whether a criminal defendant has in fact culpably committed the act of which they are accused, or whether a civil defendant is in fact responsible for the damages alleged by the plaintiff. But are trials truth-conducive? Assessing the value of trials as truth-seeking endeavors requires that we consider a h…Read more
  •  18
    Review of Mark Dsouza’s Rationale - Based Defences in Criminal Law (review)
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 14 (1): 135-140. 2020.
    Mark Dsouza’s new book, Rationale-Based Defences in Criminal Law, aims to shed new light on the question of how to conceptualize justifications and excuses as defenses against criminal liability. His offers an alternative to the common account on which justifications negate the wrongness of acts whereas excuses negate only the actor’s blameworthiness but not the act’s wrongness. Instead, Dsouza contends that the justification–excuse distinction is entirely a matter of the quality of the defendan…Read more
  •  43
    People convicted of crimes are subject to a criminal sentence, but they also face a host of other restrictive legal measures: Some are denied access to jobs, housing, welfare, the vote, or other goods. Some may be deported, may be subjected to continued detention, or may have their criminal records made publicly accessible. These measures are often more burdensome than the formal sentence itself. In Beyond Punishment?, Zachary Hoskins offers a philosophical examination of these burdensome legal…Read more
  •  13
    The New Philosophy of Criminal Law (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield International. 2015.
    This volume is a collection of twelve new essays, authored by leading philosophers and legal theorists, examining the central conceptual and normative questions underlying our institutions of criminal law.
  •  68
    Criminalization and the Collateral Consequences of Conviction
    Criminal Law and Philosophy 12 (4): 625-639. 2018.
    Convicted offenders face a host of so-called “collateral” consequences: formal measures such as legal restrictions on voting, employment, housing, or public assistance, as well as informal consequences such as stigma, family tensions, and financial insecurity. These consequences extend well beyond an offender’s criminal sentence itself and are frequently more burdensome than the sentence. This essay considers two respects in which collateral consequences may be relevant to the question of what t…Read more
  •  1
    Multiple-Offense Sentencing Discounts: Score One for Hybrid Accounts of Punishment
    In Jesper Ryberg, Julian V. Roberts & Jan Willem de Keijser (eds.), Sentencing Multiple Crimes, Oxford University Press. pp. 75-93. 2017.
    This chapter examines one intuitively appealing legal practice for which retributivist accounts struggle to find justification: multiple-offense sentencing discounts. It also considers several proposed strategies for justifying bulk discounts on the basis of retributivism. Three strategies are discussed: those that appeal to an absolute punishment maximum, those that appeal to interpersonal practices of blame and making amends, and those that suggest that perpetrators of multiple offenses someti…Read more
  • Collateral Restrictions
    In Chad Flanders & Zachary Hoskins (eds.), The New Philosophy of Criminal Law, Rowman & Littlefield International. pp. 249-265. 2015.
  •  50
    On Highest Authority
    Social Theory and Practice 35 (3): 393-412. 2009.
    This paper examines whether religious reasons have a legitimate place in a liberal democracy's policy debates. Robert Audi, building from Rawlsian themes, contends that civic virtue obliges religious citizens who advocate for public policies to have sufficiently motivating secular reasons. Others contend it's unfair to exclude reasonable citizens from policy debates merely because their only reasons are religious ones. This essay seeks to reconcile the intuitions behind these competing views. I …Read more
  •  42
    International Criminal Law and Philosophy (edited book)
    with Larry May
    Cambridge University Press. 2010.
    International Criminal Law and Philosophy is the first anthology to bring together legal and philosophical theorists to examine the normative and conceptual foundations of international criminal law. In particular, through these essays the international group of authors addresses questions of state sovereignty; of groups, rather than individuals, as perpetrators and victims of international crimes; of international criminal law and the promotion of human rights and social justice; and of what co…Read more
  •  29
    Lara Denis , Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide (review)
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 10 (3): 361-364. 2013.
  •  100
    ''Deterrent Punishment and Respect for Persons''
    Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 8 (2): 369-384. 2011.
    This article defends deterrence as an aim of punishment. Specifically, I contend that a system of punishment aimed at deterrence (with constraints to prohibit punishing the innocent or excessively punishing the guilty) is consistent with the liberal principle of respect for offenders as autonomous moral persons. I consider three versions of the objection that deterrent punishment fails to respect offenders. The first version, raised by Jeffrie Murphy and others, charges that deterrent punishment…Read more
  •  144
    Punishment
    Analysis 77 (3). 2016.
    Philosophical writing about the legal practice of punishment has traditionally focused on two central questions: what (if anything) justifies the practice of tr.