Please join us on Friday, December 1st for our Philosophy Department Colloquium with Professor Christopher Lewis.

 

The event will start at 3pm in room 402 of Cohen Hall, with a reception to follow.

 

Title: Unlocking Lex Talionis: why “Eye for an Eye” punishment would end Mass Incarceration immediately

Abstract: The Lex Talionis principle, or “an eye for an eye,” is widely regarded as barbarically punitive, inherently subject to discretionary bias, impossible to operationalize, and unable to provide a meaningful critique of American Mass Incarceration. I attempt to operationalize it, in conjunction with numerous assumptions that should be biased against my conclusions, to give some rough estimates of what it might in fact entail as a limit on the severity of permissible punishment. I argue that Lex Talionis would in fact demand a radically lenient transformation of the criminal legal systems of the United States (and many other countries), reducing incarceration for non-homicide offenses by at least an order of magnitude, and ending Mass Incarceration immediately. One might still reject Lex Talionis, but not because it is barbarically punitive. Indeed, if I am right about what it entails, many skeptics will likely think that it is not punitive enough.