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16 Crim. L. & Phil. 1 (2022)

handle is hein.journals/crimlpy16 and id is 1 raw text is: Criminal Law and Philosophy (2022) 16:1-12 https://doi.org/1 0.1007/s 11572-019-09498-5 ORIGINAL PAPER The Ethics of Law's Authority: On Tommie Shelby's, Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform Erin I. Kelly' Published online: 1 July 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Tommie Shelby argues that social injustice undermines the moral standing states would have, were they just, to condemn criminal wrongdoers. He makes a good argument, but he does not go far enough to reject the blaming function of punish- ment. Shelby's argument from impure dissent, in particular, helps to demonstrate the limits of blame in criminal justice. Keywords Ethics - Political authority - Authority of law - Ghetto - Racial injustice Social injustice Blame - Criminal justice - Legitimacy - Civic obligations - Natural duties - Stigma Reciprocity - Retributive theory - Fair play - Democratic equality Punishment - Expressivism - Insanity - Mental illness - Moral desert - Poverty Dissent - Mitigation - Self-respect - Morality - Enforcement legitimacy 1 Limiting Civic Obligations The ghetto stands in the heartland of American social injustice. It holds a mirror up to our society. Tommie Shelby's Dark Ghettos is the first philosophical treatise on the ghetto. It is premised on the hope that the tools of social science would be better used to understand and to remedy the problems suffered by people in poor, racially segregated, inner-city neighborhoods. Shelby's voice is clear, original, and insight- ful. He investigates a number of ethical questions that arise under the unjust social conditions that make racialized ghettos possible, with the aim of preparing social scientists and policy designers to engage those questions. In these comments, I explore Shelby's thinking about the ethics of law's author- ity. Specifically, I will be concerned with his argument that social injustice under- mines the legitimacy of law and the moral standing states would have, were they just, to condemn criminal wrongdoers. I will try to show that Shelby's argument helps us to understand why moral blame should play no role in criminal justice. E Erin I. Kelly ekelly@tufts.edu Tufts University, Medford, USA I_) Springer

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