Abstract
In this chapter I examine the most frequent act of withdrawing rights: Punishment. My intention is not to present a deep and detailed analysis of this matter, but instead, to discuss this issue within the framework of a rights-based theory. I show how the problems of both the justification of the institution of punishment (or in Rawlsian terms: “the practice”199 that deals with the question why we use punishment at all), and of a particular form of punishment, can be seen as a justifiable withdrawal of rights. My intention is to discuss the act of punishment in the terms I used in the previous chapter, and to show that my approach deals with the conflicts that are raised as a result of inflicting punishment. It is, of course, first necessary to introduce the main theories regarding the justification of punishment, in order to see how my approach relates and refers to these theories. I deal with this, briefly and succinctly, in the first part of the coming chapter.
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© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Ezra, O. (2002). Punishment. In: The Withdrawal of Rights. Synthese Library, vol 314. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3500-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3500-1_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-6127-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3500-1
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