CFLPP Monthly Seminar: 'The Authority to Punish in Authoritarian States'

The first 2025 Easter Term session of the monthly seminar run by the Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy will take place on Wednesday, April 23rd, at 3:00pm, through Zoom. 

The seminar will be chaired by Dr Hend Hanafy, who is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Law in the Law Faculty.  Her talk will be on 'The Authority to Punish in Authoritarian States'.  Here is an abstract of the talk:

In theorising about the justification of the authority to punish in authoritarian states, we are confronted by tension. A normative theoretical approach assumes and reaches for the ideal; what ought to be the justification of punishment in a just and ideal state? But the ideal is in tension with what is the reality of authoritarian rule under which the criminal law and criminal justice system operate. To meaningfully engage with this tension, it is essential to clearly identify the relation and impact of authoritarian rule on the authority to punish. What exactly is the problem or the root of the tension beyond the instinctive antipathy towards authoritarianism?

The path to clarity starts by paying attention to the core characteristics of authoritarian rule and how the authority to punish is the central mechanism that reinforces such characteristics. The paper explains why the authority to punish plays such a key role in authoritarian rule by exploring the relation between the authority to punish and the authority to rule. It argues that the authority to punish as a claim of coercion is a constituent aspect of the authority to rule; it, thus, becomes part and parcel of authoritarian rule. The central problem that we face, then, is not justifying punishment against a background of authoritarian governance but how to justify punishment as part of authoritarian rule. To address this problem, the paper draws on political philosophy and penal theory to discuss the possible justifications of the authority to rule and the challenges that normative justifications must overcome in responding to the contradiction of authority with autonomy and equality. The paper argues that the authority to punish in authoritarian states fundamentally lacks some of the necessary conditions for normative justification, and the most it can claim is an insufficient justification.

Anyone interested in moral or political or legal philosophy in Cambridge or beyond is welcome to participate in the seminar.  If you wish to receive the Zoom invitation, you should please request it from Matthew Kramer (mhk11@cam.ac.uk).  Please write from an institutional e-mail account rather than from a generic account such as Hotmail or Gmail.