Abstract

One objection that is often made to consequentialist theories of punishment is that they cannot motivate attractive limits on state punishment, or they cannot motivate those limits in the right way. It seems unfair to punish innocent people in order to deter crimes, and even offenders ought only to be punished proportionately for what they have done. These provide two important liberal limits on state punishment. This chapter is concerned with one of those limits: punishment is only rightly imposed on those who have breached a just criminal law. This idea has many dimensions, including the rule of law, criminal responsibility, criminalization and fair-trial protections. Each of these dimensions is explored in the light of the theory of punishment outlined in chapters 12 and 13.

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