New Books In Public Policy

All humans have an emotionally-driven sense of fairness. We get treated unfairly and we get mad. It’s no wonder, then, that our laws–and those of almost everyone else–are intended to assure that people are treated fairly. When those laws fail and we are treated unfairly, we encounter another human universal–the desire for revenge. If someone pokes you in the eye, more likely than not your first inclination is going to be to poke them in the eye too. That “eye-for-an-eye” logic just feels intuitively fair to us. Yet, our laws–and those of most “civilized” places–explicitly deny victims the right to avenge their injuries. The state has a monopoly on justice, and the state’s justice (theoretically) has nothing to do with revenge. The courts asks victims to check their “irrational” desire for revenge and pursue what is (supposedly) a higher, more “rational” form of justice. In Payback: The Case for Revenge (University of Chicago Press, 2013), Thane Rosenbaum argues that we’ve gone way too far in our rejection o