On Markel’s Retributive Damages

Over at The Legal Workshop, Cornell has posted my essay, “Through the Looking Glass:  A Response to Professor Markel’s Retributive Damages.”    In this essay, I take a look at “Retributive Damages:  A Theory of Punitive Damages as Intermediate Sanction” by Professor Dan Markel (Florida State).     As stated in the introduction, the essay addresses two threshold issues:

First, can the “retributive damages” model properly be considered punitive damages?  Second, do “retributive damages” avoid the doctrinal problems that have plagued punitive damages for decades?  In my view, the answer to both questions is “no.”

– SBS