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Punishment and Freedom

Alan Brudner author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:23rd Feb '12

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Punishment and Freedom cover

This book sets out a new understanding of the penal law of a liberal legal order. The prevalent view today is that the penal law is best understood from the standpoint of a moral theory concerning when it is fair to blame and censure an individual character for engaging in proscribed conduct. By contrast, this book argues that the penal law is best understood by a political and constitutional theory about when it is permissible for the state to restrain and confine a free agent. The book's thesis is that penal action by public officials is permissible force rather than wrongful violence only if it could be accepted by the agent as being consistent with its freedom. There are, however, different conceptions of freedom, and each informs a theoretical paradigm of penal justice generating distinctive constraints on state coercion. Although this plurality of paradigms creates an appearance of fragmentation and contradiction in the law, the author argues that the penal law forms a complex whole uniting the constraints on punishment flowing from each paradigm.

Brudner's effort is mind-blowing. Old ideas are expressed in new frameworks; familiar distinctions are drawn in different ways; existing doctrines receive novel formulations; principles that long have been taken for granted are subjected to fresh challenges Punishment and Freedom poses a deep challenge to just about everything we Anglo-American criminal theorists take for granted. * Douglas Husak, Rutgers University. Ethics 120.4 *
Alan Brudner has produced a rare and beautiful work of scholarship. He gives us nothing less than a comprehensive theory of the criminal law, with answers to almost all, if not all, the questions that commonly preoccupy its students. The scope of Brudner's study is breath-taking ...Hegel's work inspires Brudner's theory, but anyone can understand Brudner's theory without misunderstanding Hegel, though I suspect that the more one appreciates Hegel, the better one can appreciate Brudner...Brudner's theory of the criminal law is an intellectual delight, in which i hope every student of the criminal law will allow themselves to indulge. * Stephen P. Garvey, Professor of Law & Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Cornell Law School, University of Toronto Law Journal *
Alan Brudner has produced a rare and beautiful work of scholarship. He gives us nothing less than a comprehensive theory of the criminal law, with answers to almost all, if not all, the questions that commonly preoccupy its students...Brudner's theory of the criminal law is an intellectual delight, in which I hope every student of the criminal law will allow themselves to indulge * Stephen P Garvey *

ISBN: 9780199652334

Dimensions: 234mm x 157mm x 21mm

Weight: 546g

358 pages