ABSTRACT
Andrew von Hirsch has been a leader in the movement towards establishing proportionality in sentencing since the revival of interest in just deserts began in the 1970s. His sentencing model, which has been developed in the public arena over a period of more than 20 years, contains detailed philosophical justifications for state punishment and is supported by specific practical proposals for constructing a sentencing system. 2 No doubt because of these three features, von Hirsch's ideas have attracted much attention and comment. Not all of it, however, is positive. This paper focuses on von Hirsch's model and its critics and uses the theory of measurement as a source of critique instead of the more usual choice of the philosophy of punishment. Measurement theory is particularly relevant to the discussion because it defines the features of the ordinal and cardinal scales of measurement that von Hirsch has used in his model, and was developed to set limits on the kinds of statements that can meaningfully be made about the numbers which each scale produces and the uses to which they can properly be put.
