A seal pressed in the hot wax of vengeance: A girardian understanding of expressive punishment

Journal of Law and Religion

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 35-68

  Steele, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 36849020886     PISSN: 07480814     EISSN: 21633088     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1051507     Document Type: Article

References (271)

1. Punishment: A Philosophy & Public Affairs Reader Introduction, viii (A. John Simmons et al. eds., Princeton U. Press 1995).
2. Joshua Dressier, Understanding Criminal Law § 2.03[D] (Matthew Bender 1987) (expensive/denunciatory theory is “hybrid” of utilitarian and retributive theories).
3. James Fitzjames Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 3 vols. (Macmillan & Co. 1883).
4. H.L.A. Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality 61 (Stanford U. Press 1963)
5. (quoting Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 162 (Henry Holt 1873)).
6. Id. at 63.
7. Stephen, Id., at 81–82.
8. Hart, Id., at 61
9. (quoting Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 162 (Henry Holt 1873)).
10. Stephen, Id., at 81.
11. Id. at Vol. 1479, Vol. II, 82.
12. Durkheim, infra n. 11, at 58.
13. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (W.D. Halls trans., The Free Press 1984).
14. id. at 39
15. Id. at 58.
16. Id. at 53–54.
17. Id. at 55.
18. Id. at 63.
19. Id. at 63.
20. Id. at 45.
21. Id. at 44.
22. Durkheim declares that only primitive societies punish the passive instruments of crime, but that concept is familiar to golfers everywhere and has recently been re-affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in a forfeiture case. Bennis v. Mich., 517 U.S. 1163 (1996) (in challenge to Michigan forfeiture law applied to automobile wherein driver solicited prostitution, the Court upheld the abatement of the nuisance (i.e., the automobile itself), quoting The Palmyra, 12 Wheat. 1, 14 (1827) as holding that “The thing is here primarily considered the offender, or rather the offense is attached primarily to the thing.”)
23. See Durkheim, U.S., at 44–45.
24. Id. at 62–63.
25. Id. at 45, 48.
26. Joel J. Feinberg, The Expressive Function of Punishment, reprinted in A Reader on Punishment 71 (R.A. Duff & David Garland eds., Oxford U. Press 1994).
27. Id. at 75.
28. Id. at 77–80.
29. Id. at 77, 87.
30. Id. at 87.
31. For a general overview of expressive theories in various types of law, see Matthew D. Adler, Expressive Theories of Law: A Skeptical Overview, 148 U. Perm. L. Rev. 1363 (2000) (reviewing expressive theories of punishment from Dan Kahan, Robert Nozick, Jean Hampton, Igor Primoratz, & Anthony Duff)
32. see Carol S. Steiker, Twenty-Sixth Annual Review of Criminal Procedure: Foreward: Punishment and Procedure: Punishment Theory and the Criminal-Civil Procedural Divide, 85 Geo. L.J. 775, 800–806 (1997).
33. Dan M. Kahan, What Do Alternative Sanctions Mean?, 63 U. Chi. L. Rev. 591 (1996).
34. Jean Hampton, An Expressive Theory of Retribution, in Retributivism and its Critics (Cragg Wesley ed., Steiner Pblg. 1992)
35. Jean Hampton, Correcting Harms vs. Righting Wrongs: The Goal of Retribution, 39 UCLA L. Rev. 1659 (1992)
36. Jean Hampton, The Retributive Idea, in Forgiveness and Mercy, Jeffrie G. Murphy & Jean Hampton (Cambridge U. Press 1988).
37. Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence 12 (Beacon Press 1998) (discussing Hampton's “powerful arguments”).
38. Hampton, The Retributive Idea, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, at 137.
39. Marc Galanter & David Luban, Poetic Justice: Punitive Damages and Legal Pluralism, 42 Am. U. L. Rev. 1393, 1434 (1993).
40. Adler, Am. U. L. Rev., n. 28.
41. T. Mathiesen, General Prevention as Communication in A Reader on Punishment 231, Am. U. L. Rev.
42. Steven G. Gey, Justice Scalia s Death Penalty, 20 Fla. St. L. Rev. 67, 107, n. 180 (1992)
43. See Kahan, Fla. St. L. Rev.
44. Steiker, Fla. St. L. Rev.
45. Adler, Fla. St. L. Rev.
46. Donald Dripps, The Exclusivity of the Criminal Law: Towards a “Regulatory Model” of, or “Pathological Perspective” on, the Civil-Criminal Distinction, 7 J. Contemporary L. Issues 199 (1996)
47. Mark Tushnet & Larry Yackle, Symbolic Statutes and Real Laws: The Pathologies of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 47 Duke L. J. 1 (1997) (symbolic criminal laws mete out random punishments).
48. Durkheim, Duke L. J. 1, at 56 (referring to this perception as a necessary illusion).
49. Kathryn Preyer, Penal Measures in the American Colonies: An Overview, 26 Am. J. Leg. History 326, 350 (1982).
50. id. at 350.
51. Feinberg, id., at 87.
52. Hart, id., at 83.
53. Id. at 65–66.
54. Girard's works include Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure (Yvonne Freccaro trans., Johns Hopkins U. Press 1965)
55. Violence and the Sacred (Patrick Gregory trans., Johns Hopkins U. Press 1977)
56. To Double Business Bound (Johns Hopkins U. Press 1978)
57. The Scapegoat (Yvonne Freccaro trans., Johns Hopkins U. Press 1986)
58. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World with J.M. Ourgoulian & G. Lefort (Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer trans., Stanford U. Press 1987)
59. Job: The Victim of His People (Yvonne Freccaro trans., Stanford U. Press 1987)
60. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (James G. Williams trans., Orbis Books 2001).
61. I find Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly's overviews of Girard's theories to be succinct and powerful, and my summary is particularly indebted to his. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence 13–39 (Fortress Press 1992)
62. The Gospel and the Sacred 1–14, 129–152 (Fortress Press 1994).
63. Gil Balie has expounded on Girard's works in Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (Crossroad Publg. Co. 1997).
64. Many of Girard's key writings have been gathered by James G. Williams in The Girard Reader (Crossroad Publg. Co. 1996).
65. Significant treatments of Girard's work in American legal scholarship include Donald L. Beschle, What's Guilt (or Deterrence) Got To Do With It?: The Death Penalty, Ritual, and Mimetic Violence, 38 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 487 (1997) (presenting an overview of Girard's work and arguing that Girard's theory has conflicting implications for those who support or reject the death penalty)
66. Donald L. Beschle, Commentary: Why Do People Support Capital Punishment? The Death Penalty as Community Ritual, 33 Conn. L. Rev. 765 (2001)
67. Roberta M. Harding, Capital Punishment as Human Sacrifice: A Societal Ritual as Depicted in George Eliot's Adam Bede, 48 Buffalo L. Rev. 175 (2000).
68. Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, Buffalo L. Rev., at 129–130.
69. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Buffalo L. Rev., at 10
70. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Buffalo L. Rev., at 31.
71. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Buffalo L. Rev. at 15.
72. Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Buffalo L. Rev. at 15–17.
73. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Buffalo L. Rev. at 143–149
74. Williams, Buffalo L. Rev. at 291–292 (glossary's definition of “Model/Mediator”).
75. Girard, Things Hidden, Buffalo L. Rev. at 416–431
76. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Buffalo L. Rev. at 21 (“Etymologically the scandal is that which causes one to stumble. In its developed meaning, the stumbling block is the hindrance that one loves, the obstacle that gives painful purpose to one's ever-frustrated and thus ever-renewed desire.”).
77. Williams, Buffalo L. Rev. at ch. 5
78. The Goodness of Mimetic Desire, taken from Violence, Difference, Sacrifice: A Conversation with Rene Girard, in 25 Religion & Literature No. 2, 9–33 (1993).
79. This aspect of Girard's thought is explored by Rebecca Adams in “Loving Mimesis and Girard's ‘Scapegoat of the Text’: A Creative Reassessment of Mimetic Desire” in Violence Renounced: Rene Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking (Willard M. Swartley ed., Pandora Press 2000).
80. Williams, Violence Renounced: Rene Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, at 64.
81. This point is important, because some of Girard's critics believe, mistakenly, that his theories are too fixated on violence. For example, in critiquing Girard's focus on violence, Susan L. Mizruchi states that “the universal constant is not the need or desire to release aggressive impulses, but rather the intent to discover kin, to confirm the likeness (or, if myriad reasons preclude that, the antithetical difference) of the other.” Susan L. Mizruchi, The Science of Sacrifice: American Literature and Modern Social Theory 64 (Princeton U. Press 1998).
82. “Thus, at every place in his analysis where Girard writes ‘violence,’ [Mizruchi] would write kindred.’” Id. at 64.
83. But, Girard begins his theory with imitation before violence escalates, and Mizruchi's emphasis on the universal search for interpersonal “likeness” corroborates rather than refutes Girard's concept of mimetic desire and identification. Moreover, Girard does indeed address the positive possibilities of mimetic processes. See Id. 53–55 & accompanying text.
84. On the other hand, for criticism that Girard's theories ignore the “most compelling record available” of the reality of sacred violence, i.e., the Mesoamerican record, see David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization 3, 7–8, 56, 192–193 (Beacon Press 1999).
85. Girard, Deceipt, Desire, and the Novel, City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization 3, at 9.
86. Paisley Livingston, What is Mimetic Desire?, 7 Phil. Psychol. No. 3, 291, 305 (1994) (exploring the meaning of Girard's “mimetic desire” and emphasizing the role of the subject's “tutelary beliefs” in the importance of the model).
87. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Phil. Psychol. at 21.
88. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1. 832 (Herbert Weir Smith trans., Harv. U. Press 1926). (“For few there are.among men in whom it is inborn to admire without envy a friend's good fortune”).
89. John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon 6 (Oxford U. Press 1996).
90. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon at 8.
91. Id. at 257.
92. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Id. at 26
93. Girard, Things Hidden, Id. at 28.
94. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Id. at 28.
95. Girard, Things Hidden, Id. at 52
96. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Id., at 26.
97. Hence the sacred is “the sum of human assumptions resulting from collective transferences focused on a reconciliatory victim at the conclusion of a mimetic crisis.” Girard, Things Hidden, Id. at 42.
98. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Id. at 257.
99. Id. at 12.
100. Id. at 5.
101. Hamerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Id. at 38.
102. Gunter Gebauer & Christoph Wulf, Mimesis 261–262 (Don Reneau trans., U. Cal. Press 1995) (analyzing Girard's treatment of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex).
103. See e.g. Girard, Things Hidden, Mimesis at 51–52 (analyzing kingship inauguration rituals).
104. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Mimesis at 23 (italics in the original).
105. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Mimesis at 29.
106. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Mimesis at 14.
107. Id. at 8.
108. Id. (italics in the original).
109. Id. at 22.
110. Id. at 22
111. see Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness 124 (Beacon Press 1998) (commenting on the perception that, following the Rwandan genocide, “the trials themselves were revenge.”).
112. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness at 32–33.
113. id. at 34.
114. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, id. at 15.
115. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, id. at 164
116. Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, id. at 2.
117. See generally Girard, Deceit. Desire and the Novel, id.
118. Gen 3:5 (R.S.V.).
119. Wisdom 2:23–24 (Harper Study Bible).
120. Gen 4:7.
121. Gen 4:15.
122. This motif of rivalry between twins or brothers, resulting in murder and the founding of the city, recurs repeatedly throughout Indo-European mythology. J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans 140 (Thamas & Hudson 1989).
123. See Girard, Violence and the Sacred, In Search of the Indo-Europeans at 61–62 (discussion of fraternal strife in myth) and 56–58 (discussion of traditional cultures' fear of twins).
124. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, In Search of the Indo-Europeans at 146.
125. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 192–194 (U. Cal. Press 1985).
126. As Robert Hamerton-Kelly points out, Marx realized that “the intrinsic value of a stock or property is negligible compared to the exchange value” dictated by the market, meaning that the market “is a network of bondage to one another's imagined likes and dislikes, an essentially fantastic web of servitude to the phantoms of desire.” Hammerton-Kelly, Sacred Violence, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity at 23.
127. See Le Bon, infra n. 102, at 121–122 (discussing contagious power of advertisements).
128. James B. Stewart, Den of Thieves 97 (Simon & Schuster 1992).
129. Id. at 146.
130. Id. at 35, 110.
131. Id. at 126.
132. See Karl E. Case & Ray C. Fair, Economics ch. 23 (6th ed., Prentice Hall 2001).
133. Dworkin notes that the liberal tradition “supposes that political decisions must be, so far as possible, independent of any particular conception of the good life, or what gives value to life.” Ronald Dworkin, Liberalism, in Public and Private Morality 113, 127 (Stuart Hampshire ed., Cambridge U. Press 1978).
134. Likewise, microeconomic theory traditionally tended to take desires as exogenous givens. Gary S. Becker, Accounting for Tastes 3–4 (Harv. U. Press 1996) (“The economist's normal approach to analyzing consumption and leisure choices assumes that individuals maximize utility with preferences that depend at any moment only on the goods and services they consume at that time.
135. These preferences are assume to be independent of both past and future consumption, and of the behavior of everyone else.”) Becker's ground breaking accounting of consumer desire repeatedly invokes aspects of mimetic desire. He posits that consumers maximize “social capital,” by “often choos[ing] restaurants, neighborhoods, schools, books to read, political opinions, food or leisure activities with an eye to pleasing peers and others in their social network.” Id. at 12
136. posits that “style is social rivalry,” (id. at 46)
137. posits that “a person's demand [can] depend on the demands of others.” (Id. at 202).
138. David A. Levy & Paul R. Nail, Contagion: A Theoretical and Empirical Review and Reconceptualization, 119(2) Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs 233, 239 & passim. I thank David Oman for bringing this survey to my attention.
139. Id. at 266.
140. Id. at 266–274.
141. See Id. 53–58 & accompanying text.
142. See e.g., Levy & Nail, Id. at 244 (witch trials), 239 (panics), & 264 (riots).
143. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd (A Study of the Popular Mind) (2d. ed., Cherokee Publg. Co. 1982).
144. Levy & Nail, The Crowd (A Study of the Popular Mind at 238.
145. Le Bon, The Crowd (A Study of the Popular Mind at 122–123.
146. Id. at Book III, Chapter III (criminal juries) & Book III, Chapter V (parliamentary assemblies).
147. See generally Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Id. at ch. 2, the Sacrificial Crisis.
148. Girard, The Scapegoat, Id. at 12
149. Walter Burkert, Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions 52–53 (Harv. U. Press 1996) (sacrifices made to avert storms, plagues or flooding) & 108–113 (to avert disease, bad weather, or military disaster)
150. Robert Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion 24–25 (Clarendon Press Oxford 1983)
151. Joshua 7 (elaborate accusation and scapegoating ritual following military defeat).
152. John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases and Proverbs traced to their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature 779 (Emily Morison Beck ed., 15th ed., Little, Brown & Co. 1980) (citing variations of this proverb spanning the Book of Proverbs to the speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
153. Jonah 1–2.
154. In the European witch-hunts, a typical accusation against witches in coastal towns involved the sinking of ships. Robin Briggs, Witches & Neighbors 54–55 (Penguin Books 1996).
155. Briggs, Witches & Neighbors at 40, 44–45, 91.
156. Border Crossing, The New Republic Online [www.thenewrepublic.com/073001/editorial073001.html) (July 30, 2001).
157. Mari J. Matsuda, Where Is Your Body 178–179, n. 4 (Beacon Press 1996).
158. Danielle S. Allen, Democratic Dis-ease: Of Anger and the Troubling Nature of Punishment, in The Passions of Law (Susan A. Bandes ed., N.Y.U. Press 1999).
159. Id. at 192.
160. Id. at 194.
161. Id. at 194–195.
162. Id. at 205.
163. Id. at 194.
164. Id. at 194 (“communal disease”), 195–197.
165. Id. at 198.
166. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Id. at 49.
167. Id. at 40 (emphasis in original).
168. Id. at 49.
169. Keith D. Nicholson, Comment: Would You Like More Salt with that Wound? Post-Sentence Victim Allocution in Texas 26 St. Mary's L. J. 1103, 1104 (1995).
170. Wisdom 14:22–26 (N.R.S.V. 1993).
171. Girard, The Scapegoat, Wisdom at 13.
172. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power 75–80 (Carol Stewart trans., The Noonday Press, Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1962) (discussing the fitting metaphor of “fire” for the crowd). In general, much of Canetti's masterwork, Crowds and Power, brims with insights similar to Girard's, although Canetti's exposition is less rigorous and more poetic.
173. Governor George W. Bush (Texas), Twanna M. Powell Lecture Series, Texas A. & M. U. (Apr. 6, 1998).
174. Williams, Twanna M. Powell Lecture Series at 15.
175. That question—How Can Satan Cast Out Satan?—is the title of an essay reprinted as Chapter 13, id.
176. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, id. at 12–13.
177. Girard, The Scapegoat, id. at 21.
178. See Girard, Violence and the Sacred, id. at 12.
179. Girard, The Scapegoat, id. at 18–19.
180. David E. Bernstein, The Breast Implant Fiasco, 87 Cal. L. Rev. 457 (1999).
181. Kenneth Foster, A Legal Perspective, in Phantom Risk: Scientific Interference and the Law 32–36 (Kenneth Foster et al. eds., MIT Press 1993).
182. Williams, Phantom Risk: Scientific Interference and the Law at 271.
183. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Phantom Risk: Scientific Interference and the Law at 309–318
184. Williams, Phantom Risk: Scientific Interference and the Law at 23–24.
185. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 9.208, n. 283 (William Whiston trans. & ed, John E. Beardsley 1895).
186. See also Burkert, Jewish Antiquities at 108–113 (ritual and atonements made to alleviate “present sufferings”).
187. Girard, Job: The Victim of His People, Jewish Antiquities at 78.
188. Jonah 1:7.
189. Joshua 1.
190. Job 6:27
191. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis, 1195
192. Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.9.5.
193. Exod 28:30.
194. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Exod at 311–315.
195. William T. Pizzi, Trials Without Truth: Why Our System of Criminal Trials Has Become an Expensive Failure and What We Need to Do to Rebuild It 74–75 (N.Y.U. Press 1999) (citing “rolling the dice” analogies in U.S. v. Ruiz, 47 F.3d 452, 455 (1st Cir. 1995) & U.S. v. Gramves, 98 F.3d 258, 260 (7th Cir. 1996)).
196. (citing “rolling the dice” analogies in U.S. v. Ruiz, 47 F.3d 452, 455 (1st Cir. 1995)
197. U.S. v. Gramves, 98 F.3d 258, 260 (7th Cir. 1996)).
198. Matthew R. Christ, The Litigious Athenian 75 (Johns Hopkins U. Press 1998) 75 (quoting Isocrates (18.9–10) quoting a client)).
199. Galanter & Luban, The Litigious Athenian at 1447–1448.
200. The Litigious Athenian.
201. Furman v. Ga., 408 U.S. 238, 293 (1972) (concurring in the Court's judgment).
202. Id. at 309–310.
203. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Secret Sewers of Vice”: Disgust, Bodies, and the Law, in The Passions of Law (Susan A. Bandes ed., N.Y.U. Press 1999).
204. Id. at 25.
205. Id. at 29.
206. Nussbaum at 44–49 (discussing sodomy).
207. Martha Grace Duncan, In Slime and Darkness: The Metaphor of Filth in Criminal Justice, 68 Tul. L. Rev. 725 (1994).
208. Id. at 757 (emphasis added).
209. Id. at 729, 798.
210. See Martha Grace Duncan, Romantic Outlaws, Beloved Prisons: The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment (N.Y.U. Press 1996).
211. Duncan, In Slime and Darkness, Beloved Prisons: The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment at 753.
212. Durkheim, Beloved Prisons: The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment at 40 (“In other words, we should not say that an act offends the common consciousness because it is criminal, but that it is criminal because it offends that consciousness. We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it”).
213. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Beloved Prisons: The Unconscious Meanings of Crime and Punishment at 15.
214. Michael Tonry, Rethinking Unthinkable Punishment Policies in America, 46 UCLA L. Rev. 1751, 1787(1999).
215. Jonathan Simon & Christian Spaulding, Tokens of Our Esteem: Aggravating Factors in the Era ofDergulated Death Penalties, in The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture 109 (A. Sarat ed., Oxford U. Press 1999).
216. Girard, The Scapegoat, Politics, and Culture at 20.
217. Id. at 15.
218. Briggs, Politics, and Culture at 40,44–45, 91.
219. Stephen Eric Bonner, A Rumor about the Jews 22–23 (St. Martin's Press 2000) (fabricated protocols about Jewish control over the press) & 26–27 (fabricated protocols about Jewish control over education).
220. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 636, 645, 652 (1995).
221. Id. at 645.
222. At the risk of sounding flippant when I am making a serious point, I venture the opinion that, metaphorically, Justice Scalia is living in the thrall of Satan. I mean that Justice Scalia's jurisprudence is marked by an unreflective urge to use “good violence” to chase out “bad violence” (using Satan to cast out Satan), which creates a social order based upon lies. See Gey, Id.
223. By “Satan,” Girard means “the mimetic process seen as a whole; that is why he [Satan] is the source not merely of rivalry and disorder but of all the form of lying order inside which humanity lives.” Girard, Things Hidden, Id. at 162.
224. Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act of 1998 (Proposition 21 on the March 7, 2000 California statewide ballot).
225. Dan M. Kahan, Unthinkable Misrepresentations: A Response For Tonry, 46 UCLA L. Rev. 1933, 1935 (resort to “stubborn pubic vengefulness” formulas is simplistic and does not help find solutions).
226. William H. Simon, The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers' Ethics 168 (Harv. U. Press 1998).
227. Tonry, The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers' Ethics at 1781.
228. Id. at 1781–1786.
229. In contrast, in some people's democracies, defense counsel's role is to assist the prosecution. Monroe H. Freedman, Understanding Lawyer's Ethics 15–16 (Matthew Bender 1970).
230. Mark Baker, D.A.: Prosecutors in their own Words 28 (Simon & Schuster 1999) (prosecutor commenting that child sexual abuse cases “prosecute themselves,” and wondering in hindsight how many of those claims were true)
231. Paul & Shirley Eberle, The Abuse of Innocence (The MacMartin Preschool Trial) (Prometheus Books 1993).
232. Baker, The Abuse of Innocence (The MacMartin Preschool Trial at 28–29.
233. Dorothy Rabinowitz, From the Mouths of Babes to a Jail Cell, Harper's Magazine, May 1990 (concerning the infamous accusation and prosecution of Kelly Michaels for alleged sexual assault).
234. N.J. v. Michaels, 264 N.J. Super. 579 (1993).
235. Harry Farrell, Swift Justice (Murder and Vengeance in a California Town) 8, 18 (St. Martins Press 1992).
236. Id. at 229,233.
237. Id. at 242.
238. Id. at 241.
239. A lynching at the hands of the jeering mob is not the only mode by which the crowd participates in sacred violence. As Mitchell B. Merback explains in his The Thief the Cross and the Wheel (U. Chi. Press 1999)
240. in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the local citizenry would in many cases treat the condemned with “the utmost dignity and respect,” thereby facilitating a “good death” that “lift[ed] the miasma”—the “taint of corruption and infamy” the crime had wrought upon the social body. (id. at 145–146).
241. When the condemned was penitent, his sacredness was acknowledged. The crowd would believe that the condemned became a “holy victim” who had the power to intercede in heaven on behalf of those he had wronged. (Id. at 152.)
242. Quoting Richard van Diilman, Merbeck “concludes that the condemned ‘might become an object of envy for others and be celebrated as heroic or as a martyr.’” (Id. at 152–153.)
243. In many creation myths, violence creates the founding order out of primordial chaos. In the common myths of cosmic battle, an upstart group of gods (a mob) slays a primordial god, such as the sea. In the Enuma Elish, the very carcass of the slain monster, the Leviathan, became the structural foundation of heaven and earth. Although traces of the cosmic battle have been “banished from Genesis with extreme care,” scattered references to the myth remain in the Jewish scriptures. Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis 22 (Schocken Books 1966).
244. (See e.g. Isaiah 17:12–14; 27:1; 51:9; Gen 49:25; Deut 33:13; Habakkuk 3:10; Psalms 74:12–18.) In other creation myths, the progenitors of mankind were twin brothers (rivalrous doubles), one of whom was “sacrificed and carved up by his brother to produce mankind.” J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans 140 (Thames & Hudson 1989).
245. Brian J. Telpner, Student Author, Constructing Safe Communities: Megan's Laws and the Purposes of Punishment, 85 Geo. L. J. 2039 (1997), nn. 5–13 (cataloging “Megan's Laws” in various states).
246. Id. at 2068.
247. Id. at 2067 (citing Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison 182 (Alan Sheridan trans., Knopf 1995).
248. Id. at 2067.
249. David Garland, Punishment and Culture: The Symbolic Dimension of Criminal Justice, in 11 Studies in Law, Politics and Society 195 (1991).
250. This point is discussed in Austin Sarat, Capital Punishment as a Legal, Political and Cultural Fact: An Introduction, in The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture 9 (A. Sarat ed., Oxford U. Press 1999).
251. Garland, The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture, at 193.
252. William E. Connolly, The Will, Capital Punishment, and Cultural War, in The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture 197–199 (A. Sarat ed., Oxford U. Press 1999).
253. Jeffrie G. Murphy makes a related point when he argues that retributivism entails systematic self-deception about our motives in punishing. Jeffrie G. Murphy, Moral Epistemology, the Retributive Emotions, and the “Clumsy Moral Philosophy ” of Christ, in The Passions of Law (Susan A. Bandes ed., N.Y.U. Press 1999).
254. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, The Passions of Law, at 197.
255. Genevieve Buhrer-Thiery, “Just Anger” or “Vengeful Anger”? The Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West, in Anger's Past: The Social Uses of an Emotions in the Middle Ages 91 (Barbara H. Rosenwien ed., Cornell U. Press 1998).
256. Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987).
257. Jennifer L. Culbert, Beyond Intention: A Critique of the “Normal” Criminal Agency, Responsibility, and Punishment in American Death Penalty Jurisprudence, in The Killing State: Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture 220 (A. Sarat ed., Oxford U. Press 1999).
258. Id. at 210, 221.
259. Wai Chee Dimock, Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy 135 (U. Cal Press 1996).
260. Dimock perceptively contrasts the law's seemingly symmetrical weighing of act and punishment with literature's textualized consideration of the asymmetries and residues that law fails to recognize. For example, regarding James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer, Dimock writes that “what is dispensed here, then, turns out to be a rather disconcerting kind of justice, intensely retributive, to be sure, but also hopelessly overwrought, hopelessly asymmetrical to its object, unnerving in its excess, and unedifying in its residue.” Id. at 55. Dimock's insight identifies the interpretive violence of the law, as revealed in certain literature. Literature that exposes that lie would be, in Girardian terms, “non-mythic.” In contrast, when literature portrays the law's text as perfectly commensurate, symmetrical, and without residue, the literature, like the legal text itself, is “mythic.”
261. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Id. at 92 (emphasis in original).
262. Williams, Id. at 198 (discussing mimetic rivalry as an occasion of sin).
263. For a defenses of expressive (denunciatory) punishment that I find to be insufficiently aware of its pathological tendencies, see Stephen, Id. nn. 3–4
264. Ronald J. Rychlak, Society's Moral Right to Punish: A Further Exploration of the Denunciation Theory of Punishment, 65 Tul. L. Rev. 299 (1990)
265. Telpner, Tul. L. Rev. n. 192.
266. For articles that capture a sense of those pathologies and which could benefit from Girardian insights and analytical frameworks, see Nicholson, Tul. L. Rev. n. 127
267. Dripps, Tul. L. Rev. n. 38
268. Steiker, Tul. L. Rev. n. 28
269. Tonry, Tul. L. Rev. n. 166.
270. Perhaps the most notable commentator on expressive punishments has been Dan Kahan. Michael Tonry stridently attacks Dan Kahan's articles on expressive punishment, accusing Kahan of embracing “unthinkable” punishments. (See Tonry, Tul. L. Rev. n. 166.) Kahan stridently denies Tonry's accusation.
271. (See Kahan, Tul. L. Rev. n. 176.) I think that the better reading is that Kahan mostly evades the topic of the pathologies of expressive punishment.