Retribution, Justice, and Therapy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

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2. Rights, Justice, and the Social Contract

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. The Killing of the Innocent

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 3-25

   3. Rights and Borderline Cases

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 26-39

   4. Violence and the Socratic Theory of Legal Fidelity

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 40-57

   5. Hume and Kant on the Social Contract

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 58-73

3. Punishment and Responsibility

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75

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   2. Three Mistakes about Retributivism

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 77-81

   3. Kant’s Theory of Criminal Punishment

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 82-92

   4. Marxism and Retribution

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 93-115

   5. Involuntary Acts and Criminal Liability

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 116-127

   6. Moral Death: A Kantian Essay on Psychopathy

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 128-143

4. Therapeutic Intervention

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 145-145

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   2. Criminal Punishment and Psychiatric Fallacies

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 147-158

   3. Preventive Detention and Psychiatry

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 159-164

   4. Incompetence and Paternalism

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 165-182

   5. Total Institutions and the Possibility of Consent to Organic Therapies

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 183-201

5. Death and the Supreme Court

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 203-203

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   2. Rationality and the Fear of Death

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 205-222

   3. Cruel and Unusual Punishments

      • Jeffrie G. Murphy

      Pages 223-249

One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best reason, I think, is the belief that the essays hang together in such a way that, as a book, they produce a whole which is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. When this happens, as I hope it does in the present case, it is because the essays pursue related themes in such a way that, together, they at least form a start toward the development of a systematic theory on the common foundations supporting the particular claims in the particular articles. With respect to this collection, the essays can all be read as particular ways of pursuing the following general pattern of thought: that a commitment to justice and a respect for rights (and not social utility) must be the foundation of any morally acceptable legal order; that a social contractarian model is the best way to illuminate this foundation; that a retributive theory of punish­ ment is the only theory of punishment resting on such a foundation and thus is the only morally acceptable theory of punishment; that the twentieth century's faddish movement toward a "scientific" or therapeutic response to crime runs grave risks of undermining the foundations of justice and rights on which the legal order ought to rest; and, finally, that the legitimate worry about the tendency of the behavioral sciences to undermine the values of

• Marx
• justice
• philosophy of law
• responsibility
• retributivism

• University of Arizona, Tucson, USA

  Jeffrie G. Murphy

Policies and ethics