Relational Reasons and the Criminal Law1

This chapter addresses questions concerning the kinds of reason that the criminal law of a tolerably just society offers those whom it claims to bind. It defends three claims. First, the normative reasons we have for obeying the criminal law are, typically or paradigmatically, relational and civic: in a liberal republic, of the kind in which contemporary democrats should aspire to live, they are grounded in our relationship not to the law or the state as such, but to our fellow citizens as members of the polity whose law it is; we should obey the criminal law because that is what we owe to our fellow citizens — and because it is our law. Second, we do not typically have such relational reasons for obeying the substantive criminal law: indeed, we do not typically have any normative reason to obey the substantive criminal law, nor does that law seek our obedience. Third, the criminal law's authority does not consist in the power to make wrongful conduct that was not already independently wrongful: it rather lies primarily in its procedural dimension, as the power to call alleged wrongdoers to public account, to judge their conduct, and to condemn and punish their criminal wrongdoing; and that authority is relational, in that it depends on the criminal law's status as the law of a political community whose members can collectively claim such authority over each other.