Responsibility and Criminal Law: Comments on Vincent Chiao, Criminal Law in the Age of the Administrative State, Chapter 7

Abstract

First paragraph: The main focus of this discussion is on Chapter 7 of Vincent Chiao’s impressive and provocative book.1 Having developed his anti-retributivist, anti-moralist account of criminal law and punishment in earlier chapters, Chiao now faces a familiar kind of criticism. If, says the critic, we are to treat each other appropriately as responsible agents, we must be ready to respond critically to the wrongs we commit: in our extralegal moral and social relationships, wrongdoing requires blame—which brings with it a range of further, punitive, social reactions; the central function of criminal law is to provide a formalized, institutional version of such responses, through the conviction and and punishment of those who commit the kinds of wrong that we criminalize. If we forswear this kind of punitive, retributive, response to wrongdoing, we give up on treating each other as responsible agents.