Criminal punishment and the right to rule

Criminal justice is much more deeply connected to the very possibility of state authority than is usually understood. In this article, I argue that, whatever else criminal justice might accomplish, there is one task that it must accomplish. This, I argue, is because a certain idea of criminal justice is built into the very idea of state authority as we know it. It is just part of the idea of individuals having a private right, I argue, that there exists a legal mechanism for vindicating those rights when violated. Similarly, I argue, it is just part of the idea of the state having an exclusive right to set the terms of our association that there exists a legal mechanism for vindicating its exclusive right to do so when it is challenged. This idea of criminal justice is an old one that is built into an old understanding of state authority. In the final section of this article, I show that it is not only conceptually coherent but also normatively attractive. I end by showing that some views that have often been associated with the right-to-rule approach set out here are not part of the account at all.