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Part V Meanings/Textures, Ch.33 Proportionality (1)

Bernhard Schlink

From: The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law

Edited By: Michel Rosenfeld, András Sajó

From: Oxford Constitutions (http://oxcon.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 25 March 2023

For Aristotle ‘the just is the proportional, the unjust is what violates the proportion’.1 When society distributes honour, money, or other goods to reward merits, Aristotle demands that the goods be in proportion to the merits; and when transactions occur he demands that what one side gives and gets is in proportion to what the other side gets and gives. When one person robs or hurts another person, Aristotle discusses involuntary transactions; here too, the damage and the compensation or punishment must be in proportion. ‘Evil for evil … good for good’.2...
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