Corrective Justice as A Principle of Criminal Law: A Prolegomenon

This article argues that corrective justice is an adequate principle of criminalization. On my interpretation, corrective justice holds that, in order for an action to count as a crime, there needs to be a plausible normative story about an offender having violated the interests of a victim in a way that disturbs their relationship as equal persons and a subsequent story about responding to crime in a way that corrects this disturbance. More specifically, I claim that corrective justice is concerned with the protection of interests that persons have in owning private goods throughout standard interactions with other persons. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, I specify the subject-matter that principles of criminal law need to ground and provide an outline of the idea of corrective justice. Second, I show that corrective justice can account for the main cases of crime and the salient modes of criminal responsibility. I also argue that corrective justice can make sense of two prima facie recalcitrant types of cases (rape and inchoate offenses). Third, and finally, I address two objections to my corrective justice theory of criminal law. The first concerns the implications corrective justice has for locating criminal law along the private/public law divide. The second objection raises the putatively problematic consequences corrective justice has for understanding the separation between criminal and civil law.