Punishing States

Abstract

In Chapter 7, I considered the question of whether expressive theories of punishment, and in particular denunciatory ones, could accommodate the practice of punishing collective entities under domestic law. I argued that this practice could be best understood within the context of a denunciatory version of the expressive view that I defended in the first half of the book. In this chapter, I aim to apply some of the insights from that discussion to a rather different issue: the question of whether we should regard states as potential subjects of punishment under international criminal law.