Vol. 35 No. 2 (2015): Homenaje a Carlos S. Nino II
Articles

Punishment, Social Injustice and Moral Authority

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  • Eduardo Rivera López
Eduardo Rivera López
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2015.36

Published 2015-11-01

Keywords

  • Autoridad moral,
  • Castigo penal,
  • Teoría de la pena,
  • Carlos Nino,
  • Teoría disuasoria,
  • Retribucionismo
    • ...More
    Less
  • Moral Authority,
  • Criminal Punishment,
  • Theory of Punishment,
  • Carlos Nino,
  • Deterrent Theory,
  • Retributionism
    • ...More
    Less
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

 The question I address in this paper is whether social injustice can undermine the moral authority of society (and judges) to punish criminals. The answer to this question crucially depends on the underlying justificatory theory of punishment. I consider several theories, among them the consensual theory proposed by Carlos Nino. My aim is to explore how different theories of punishment address the challenge and to draw some tentative conclusions.

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