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This book originated as lectures for a course on political
philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In
time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as
fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his
treatise "Political Liberalism" (1993). As Rawls writes in the
preface, the restatement presents "in one place an account of
justice as fairness as I now see it, drawing on all my previous]
works." He offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and
also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his
writings.
Rawls is well aware that since the publication of "A Theory of
Justice" in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the
idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and
relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and
theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that
moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to
justice is uncertain.
Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over
the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and
responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly
challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal
offenders and calls into question our society's commitment to mass
incarceration. The Limits of Blame takes issue with a criminal
justice system that aligns legal criteria of guilt with moral
criteria of blameworthiness. Many incarcerated people do not meet
the criteria of blameworthiness, even when they are guilty of
crimes. Kelly underscores the problems of exaggerating what
criminal guilt indicates, particularly when it is tied to the
illusion that we know how long and in what ways criminals should
suffer. Our practice of assigning blame has gone beyond a pragmatic
need for protection and a moral need to repudiate harmful acts
publicly. It represents a desire for retribution that normalizes
excessive punishment. Appreciating the limits of moral blame
critically undermines a commonplace rationale for long and brutal
punishment practices. Kelly proposes that we abandon our culture of
blame and aim at reducing serious crime rather than imposing
retribution. Were we to refocus our perspective to fit the relevant
moral circumstances and legal criteria, we could endorse a humane,
appropriately limited, and more productive approach to criminal
justice.
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