Heinous crimes and the normative value of disgust. A critic to Dan Kahan view

Abstract

In this paper, I cast doubt on the claim that disgust could be used as justification to aggravate punishment in hate crimes. Although traditional authors (Lord Devlin) have used the emotion of disgust as a way to justify punishment, newly views assert that disgust is not linked only to illiberal justifications of punishment. I analyzed one of the main views on this subject (Dan Kahan) and show why this view is flawed. Particularly, I show that even though disgust is a central emotion in the way how we see some events, the disgust of the officials can never be used as a justification for punishment.