Punishment and Proportionality in Libertarian Political Theory |CITY|

Submitted by dan. on 2007-04-02 22:33.
Questions
In the libertarian society, there are, as we have said, only two parties to a dispute or action at law: the victim, or plaintiff, and the alleged criminal, or defendant. It is the plaintiff that presses charges in the courts against the wrongdoer. In a libertarian world, there would be no crimes against an ill-defined "society," and therefore no such person as a "district attorney" who decides on a charge and then presses those charges against an alleged criminal.

The proportionality rule tells us how much punishment a plaintiff may exact from a convicted wrongdoer, and no more; it imposes the maximum limit on punishment that may be inflicted before the punisher himself becomes a criminal aggressor.

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