Heidelberg Debate on 'Morality and Criminal Justice'

Here, as promised are the videos of the talk I gave with Robert Blecker in Heidelberg on 4 May 2012. The introduction is by Franz-Julius Morche, one of the organizers of the conference, and the moderation is by Dr. Markus Englerth. Many thanks to both of them, to Robert Blecker, and to the audience, who asked some good questions.

Comments

[James G. Rytting]

Blecker received a thorough drubbing, richly deserved, and nicely done through well grounded counter examples, rather than by airy theoretical jousting.

Like other retributivist theorists, Blecker tries -- not very hard, one might add -- to give intellectual rigor to religious idea. A virtue of his presentation is that he doesn't try to hide his root, but lets it hang out, vide his slogan "punishment is a covenant with the past." The metaphor is important, though, in that it exposes a fallacy central and essential to Blecker's view.

The past cannot be adjusted, and punishment based on the past -- the crime seen only as a relatively instantaneous event -- cannot be adjusted either. The past is immutable, and the retributivist ideal is swift and sure punishment. This is why the death penalty is the retributivists' paradigm. However, punishment is delivered by a social system, over time, and involves numerous players at different levels, some of whom, at the immediate level (guards as opposed to lawmakers) bear the practical consequence of enforcing brutal regimes. The program of punishment,as Mr. Hammel, I believe, indicated, even if based on moral sentiments, must take into consideration,therefore, feelings and interests of a broad group of people over time, and a rational system that respects feelings as well -- Blecker's stated aim -- won't meet either goal if restrained by the dead hand of past decisions.

The rest of Blecker's presentation is epitomized by his attempt to make a profundity out of the difference between "regret" and "remorse"; which shows he is a sophist even before he's a retributivist.

[John Carter Wood]

What appalls me most is that the video thumbnails all show Blecker rather than you. Where's the fairness in that?

[Christian Boulanger]

I also think the focus on the purpose of punishment instead of capital punishment is a very good one. This way, prison conditions and the problem of a life sentence (with or without parole) come into view. Robert Blecker's radically narrow focus on punishing the offender as a value itself, no matter what the consequences for society are, is really striking. He reminded me of a preacher, not a lawyer. But let's not make this a European vs. American debate, especially, as the discussants point out, there are supporters of Robert Blecker's and Andrew's positions on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Martin]

Just having seen see first part and now heading to bed I would like to comment one thing right now.

Yes, I also would like to see Breivik to be put away for the rest of his live. But this only for the reason that, based on the impressions I got of his personality, I do believe that the danger of him turning agains society is to great. He needs some serious treatment or has to but put away.

I also really do prefer to life with a legal system that errs once in a while to the advantage of some "evil person" than in a society that punishes to many innocents or low-level-perpetrators to harsh.

I think - as a thoroughly agnostic person - that this is a much more christian stance than the stance many of the oh-so-christian hypocrite american retributionalists take.

Martin

[Christian Boulanger]

Andrew: great presentation. I had expected more from Robert Blecker actually. His retributivist theory is a bit "unterkomplex" intellectually as some would say. He talks in abstract principles that hold only if you believe in them, and even his appeal to feeling and emotions are non-empirical. Yes, of course we have feelings about somebody "deserving" to die. But we have also feelings of forgiveness and mercy. That is one reason why people are no longer executed in public spaces, but the execution machinery is sanitized and carefully hidden from view, so that the public doesn't *emotionally* react with horror, pity, and shame. While you draw a balanced picture, Blecker is empirically wrong or one-sided on so many accounts. Joachim Savelsberg has one nice statistic in one of his publications (you might have similar data in your book) that really shows alot, I think. Post-War support of the Death penalty was initially lower in the U.S. (60%) than in Germany (80%), and things turned around only in the 1960s. The reason was not that evil elites shamed the population out of their "natural feelings", but simply that one generational cohort who was brought up with authoritarian values was replaced with a new one that didn't think that the punishment of death was necessary for their well-being. In reverse, in the U.S. one can very nicely show how the "law-and-order" and "tough on crime"-rhetoric employed by skilled politicians who ran their whole campaign on these subjects changed the public discourse. Talk about elites manipulating the citizenry. Charles Lane did a good job challenging Abolitionist arguments (empirically!), but Mr. Blecker leaves me very much unconvinced.