A Liberal Republic and its Criminal Law

Abstract

This chapter puts some flesh on Chapter 4’s formal account of civil order, by sketching the civil order of a liberal republic, drawing on the republican tradition of political thought. We can then see the role that criminal law can play in such a polity: as an appropriate way of marking and responding to public wrongs, it helps to sustain, and constitute, the civil order. Its central role is to provide formal declarations of the central norms of that civil order, defining what kinds of conduct citizens are entitled to expect from each other (and from the polity); and to provide the process through which those accused of violating these norms are called to public account. On this account, criminal punishment is not the primary purpose of criminal law: but given the salience of punishment in our criminal law, something must be said about its role in a liberal republic.