Theories
Julius Abegg was advocate for and founder of the Theory of Equitableness. In this theory the punishment is to be based on equitableness and should cancel with the breach of the law. Equitableness alone decides on the precondition, the degree and the manner of a punishment, yet taking into account the motives of the accused. While the act of the crime and the punishment are as such not comparable, cultural and temporal customs can provide values for their comparison. If the punishment is determined according to these ideas, it would provide retribution of the deed, the criminal's right of a just penalty, deterrence of others and protection of society.
The aspect of retribution for the deed may be the reason that Abegg was also an advocate for death penalty. In a review he states that for him death penalty is not a revenge, not violence against a crime - no, it shall be the revocation of the wrong, highly personified, so that it can not persist anymore without objection. He attributes a life an unlimited value, so that a death becomes the unlimited evil.
Read more about this topic: Julius Friedrich Heinrich Abegg
Famous quotes containing the word theories:
“Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women, as they always have done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it’s because she doesn’t quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man’s picture of woman to live up to.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“It takes twenty or so years before a mother can know with any certainty how effective her theories have been—and even then there are surprises. The daily newspapers raise the most frightening questions of all for a mother of sons: Could my once sweet babes ever become violent men? Are my sons really who I think they are?”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)