University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2015 The Moral Vigilante and Her Cousins in the Shadows Paul H. Robinson University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Courts Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Criminology Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Judges Commons, Law and Society Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons, Public Policy Commons, and the Rule of Law Commons Repository Citation Robinson, Paul H., "The Moral Vigilante and Her Cousins in the Shadows" (2015). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 506. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/506 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ROBINSON.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 3/24/2015 2:04 PM THE MORAL VIGILANTE AND HER COUSINS IN THE SHADOWS Paul H. Robinson* By definition, vigilantes cannot be legally justified—if they satis- fied a justification defense, for example, they would not be law- breakers—but they may well be morally justified, if their aim is to provide the order and justice that the criminal justice system has failed to provide in a breach of the social contract. Yet, even moral vigilan- tism is detrimental to society and ought to be avoided, ideally not by prosecuting moral vigilantism but by avoiding the creation of situa- tions that would call for it.