Re-Discovering an Older Sovereignty

Review of Sovereignty: Moral and Historical Perspectives by James Turner Johnson. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014

Too Subtle to Satisfy Many: Was Grotius\u27s Teleology of Punishment Predestined to Fail?

Most readers believe Grotius failed to refute Socinus in De satisfactione. This paper argues that Grotius\u27s failure was one of reception rather than argument. It is possible to read De satisfactione as Grotius adverted: a genuine (if subtle) concept of satisfaction, and a defence of the (small-c) catholic faith. Grotius does reject a necessitarian identical satisfaction, in which a repayment is equal to a debt, but like Aquinas, he embraces a teleological equivalent satisfaction, in which a punishment fits a crime. Yet Grotius’s catholic theory was predestined not to persuade a wartime Continental audience whose centre had not held and which sought definitive distinctions from the Roman church. His attempt to forge a broad middle way would succeed only later in Britain

Beyond Strict Justice: Hugo Grotius on Punishment and Natural Right(s)

Hugo Grotius is often seen as reducing justice to the systematic protection of individual rights. However, this reading struggles to account for the surprisingly robust place he accords to punishment. An offender cannot plausibly claim punishment as a right, and the right to punish gives little direction about how best to carry out punishment. These difficulties point toward Grotius\u27s little-noticed bifurcation of justice into “expletive” and “attributive” categories. While expletive (or “strict”) justice provides a grounding for the right to punish, its subsequent exercise must be governed by attributive justice. This higher justice considers persons and situations; requires imagination and prudential judgment; looks to the future; aims for the common good; acknowledges the importance of virtue; and never claims perfect solutions. Thus, Grotius\u27s supposedly modern understanding of natural rights is best understood within an account of his specifically political thought—one that acknowledges an overarching framework of classical natural Right