Abstract

This dissertation defends the thesis that the rule of law and the separation of powers are incompatible with the demands of morality. These systemic commitments violate the "punishment principle"-- a moral prohibition against punishing morally justified actors--by requiring judges to punish justifiably disobedient citizens and system designers to punish justifiably disobedient judges. ;Some have sought to deny the incompatibility of our jurisprudential and moral principles by arguing that the law possesses practical authority. Such authority makes any legally disobedient act morally unjustified. Hence, punishment of the disobedient is never punishment of the morally justified. This dissertation argues that this solution is indefensible because the concept of practical authority upon which it relies is conceptually confused. ;Others have sought to deny that our jurisprudential and moral principles conflict by arguing that morality itself licenses the punishment of the morally justified. They have claimed that morality is role-relative. It makes the rule-of-law values unique reasons for judicial action that in many cases justify the punishment of disobedient citizens who have rightly acted in disregard of those values. It makes the values of structural pluralism unique reasons for constitutional action that justify the punishment of disobedient judges who have rightly considered the rule-of-law values insufficient to justify the punishment of justifiably disobedient citizens. ;This dissertation argues that neither our best consequentialist theory nor our best deontological theory makes morality role-relative. Hence, morality cannot itself license the punishment of the morally justified. The conflict between our moral and jurisprudential principles is thus a genuine one that can only be resolved by abandoning our traditional conception of the requirements of structural pluralism and the rule of law