ABSTRACT
Chapter 2, “Preserving the Public Order: A Defense of Consequentialism,” explains how the appropriate justification of punishment is relative to the aims of the authority who punishes. The purpose of legal punishment is different from its purpose in other contexts, including the punishment of children by parents and the punishment of sinners by God. Parents punish their children to improve their characters, and God gives people what they deserve. But the purpose of legal punishment is to preserve the public order and promote the common good through general and specific deterrence, restraint, and rehabilitation. The institution of punishment is a “threat system” that introduces a cost for breaking the law. Retribution is not an appropriate general justifying aim of punishment because it gives us no reason to enter the social contract and it does not maintain the state. Therefore, consequentialism is an appropriate normative theory regarding the legal practice of punishment.
