Posthumous ‘Punishment’ What May Be Done About Cr

Authors: Emmanuel Melissaris

Publish Date: 2015/05/26

Volume: 11, Issue: 2, Pages: 313-329

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Abstract

The commission of criminal wrongs is occasionally revealed after the suspected wrongdoer’s death In such cases there seems to be a widelyshared intuition which also frequently motivates many people’s actions that the dead should still be blamed and that some response not only stemming from civil society but also the state to the criminal wrong is necessary This article explores the possibility of posthumous blame and punishment by the state After highlighting the deficiencies of the pure versions of retributivism and general deterrence theory but also the potential in the latter it argues for a political theory of the criminal law mainly from a normative perspective although the modest claim is made in passing that current institutional arrangements are best understood in this light which views institutions of punishment as the business not only of defendants and victims but also the political community as a whole Within this normative scheme posthumous responses to wrongs are possible and in some cases necessary for the maintenance of the stability of the political community Accountabilityholding processes may also be possible and necessary for the protection of the reputation of the deceased suspected wrongdoerThis paper was first presented at the Political Philosophy of Crime and Punishment workshop at the ICONS “Rethinking the Boundaries of Public Law and Public Space” conference hosted by the European University Institute and the University of Florence in June 2014 I am grateful to all the participants at the workshop and especially Mike Redmayne Jae Lee Federico Picinali Alec Walen Margaret Martin Leora Katz and Alon Harel For comments and discussions I am also grateful to Neil Duxbury Jules Holroyd Lindy Crewe Stasinos Stavrianeas Antje du BoisPedain Kimerley Brownlee Stuart Green and the journal’s three anonymous reviewers

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