The nature of judgments about justice -- Judgments about justice as intuitional and nuanced -- Judgments about justice as a human universal : agreements on a core of wrongdoing -- The origins of shared intuitions of justice -- Disagreements about justice -- Changing people's judgments of justice -- Should the criminal law care what the lay person thinks is just? -- Current law's deference to lay judgments of justice -- Current law's conflicts with lay judgments of justice -- Normative crime control : the utility of desert -- Building moral credibility and the disutility of injustice -- Deviations from empirical desert -- Implications for criminal justice and other reform -- The content of lay judgments of justice -- Rules of conduct : doctrines of criminalization -- Rules of conduct : doctrines of justification -- Principles of adjudication : doctrines of culpability -- Principles of adjudication : doctrines of excuse -- Principles of adjudication : doctrines of grading -- Law-community agreement and conflict, and its implications -- Empirical studies of lay judgments of justice as a law and policy tool -- Explaining history : shifting views of criminality -- Testing competing theories : blackmail -- Testing competing theories : justification defenses -- Guiding judicial discretion : extralegal punishment factors -- Intuitions of justice & the utility of desert
Summary
Research suggests that people of all demographics have nuanced and sophisticated notions of justice. Intuitions of Justice and the Utility of Desert sketches the contours of a wide range of lay judgments of justice, touching many if not most of the issues that penal code drafters or policy makers must face
