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Future Law:
Prepunishment and the Causal Theory of Verdicts
Author(s) -
Sorensen Roy
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
noûs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.574
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1468-0068
pISSN - 0029-4624
DOI - 10.1111/j.0029-4624.2006.00605.x
Subject(s) - citation , psychology , sociology , law , library science , computer science , political science
Is the King’s Messenger being treated unjustly? Why not prepunish people for their future crimes? True, it is generally easier to have knowledge about past crimes than future crimes. But is unpredictability the only problem with prepunishment? My answer is a causal theory of verdicts that condemns all actual prepunishment but for reasons that are temporally neutral. These reasons echo the semantic concerns of logicians who study the liar paradox.