The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law Volume 4: Harmless Wrongdoing

Abstract

Abstract Harmless Wrongdoing is the final volume in a four‐volume work entitled The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law that examines the kinds of harm that a state legitimately may make criminal. Of the four liberty‐limiting, or coercion‐legitimizing, principles that Feinberg examines, he accepts only the harm principle and the offense principle as morally relevant reasons for establishing criminal prohibitions. In this fourth volume, Feinberg considers and opposes the principle of legal moralism , according to which legal coercion is legitimate to prevent immoral conduct whether or not that conduct harms anyone. Feinberg examines various forms of legal moralism: including: (1) moral conservatism, which endorses legal coercion that may prevent drastic change to a group's way of life; (2) strict moralism, which supports legal coercion against nongrievance evils that are inherently immoral; (3) the exploitative principle, which recommends criminal prohibitions against substantial, unjustly exploitive, free‐floating evils; and (4) legal perfectionism, which combines moralism with paternalism in approving legal coercion that benefits an individual's character. In his defense of liberalism, Feinberg makes some concessions to legal moralism, but maintains that only harm to others and offense to others have sufficient weight to legitimize legal coercion.

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