by Claude Opus 5.5
Is public shaming a form of punishment? If so, does it need the same justifications as state punishment?
Since the seven men accused in the case behind these seminars were publicly named, they have been the subject of intense online condemnation, much of it treating the allegations as settled. None has been charged with a crime. Supporters of this response describe it as accountability; critics describe it as punishment without trial. Whether it is punishment matters, because if it is, we may need to ask whether it meets the conditions we normally require before punishment is imposed.
What is punishment?
H. L. A. Hart offered an influential definition. Punishment, in the central case, involves pain or other consequences normally considered unpleasant; it is for an offence against legal rules; it is of an actual or supposed offender for that offence; it is intentionally administered by human beings other than the offender; and it is imposed and administered by an authority constituted by a legal system against which the offence is committed.
Public shaming meets most of these conditions. It is unpleasant, often severely so. It is directed at people for what they are believed to have done. It is intentionally inflicted by others. What it lacks is the final condition: it is not imposed by a legal authority. Hart acknowledged “sub-standard” cases that lack one or more features, such as punishments by private groups or of non-offenders. Public shaming is a sub-standard case of this kind: punishment-like, but informal.
Joel Feinberg added that punishment has an expressive function: it communicates condemnation. Public shaming is expressive through and through. Its central content is the message that its target deserves contempt. On Feinberg’s view, this is part of what makes something punishment rather than a mere penalty.
Blame versus punishment
But not every expression of condemnation is punishment. We blame people constantly, privately and publicly, and we do not think every act of blame needs the justification required for imprisonment. T. M. Scanlon has argued that blame consists in modifying one’s attitudes and relationship towards someone in response to their wrongdoing. Ceasing to trust someone, declining to socialise with them, or saying publicly that what they did was wrong are forms of blame that individuals are entitled to engage in, subject to some limits.
The line between blame and punishment is not sharp, but several features push public shaming towards the punitive end. When it is coordinated among many people, it ceases to be an individual modification of a relationship and becomes a collective sanction. When it aims to cause suffering, for instance through harassment, or to impose material losses such as dismissal from a job, it goes beyond expressing disapproval. And when it targets people with whom the shamers have no relationship at all, it cannot be understood as a modification of a relationship; it is an imposition from outside.
Does it need the same justifications?
If public shaming is a form of punishment, even an informal one, then the reasons we demand justification for state punishment apply to it too, at least in part. State punishment needs justification because it deliberately imposes suffering, and we require that it be deserved, proportionate and accurately directed. Those requirements protect people against arbitrary and excessive harm. Nothing about the informality of public shaming makes those protections irrelevant.
Several justificatory conditions carry over.
Accuracy. Punishment of the innocent is a grave wrong. Before imposing punishment, the state must establish guilt to a high standard. Public shaming often proceeds on allegation alone. The misidentification of an innocent man in this case shows the danger.
Proportionality. State punishment is calibrated to the seriousness of the offence. Public shaming has no calibration; its intensity depends on virality, not desert.
Standing. Punishment requires an authority with standing to impose it. Who has standing to shame a stranger on the basis of a newspaper article?
Process. State punishment follows a process that allows the accused to answer. Public shaming does not.
Some conditions may not carry over in full. Private individuals have rights of expression that the state does not, and condemning publicly reported conduct is part of public discourse. It would be too demanding to require a trial before anyone may criticise anyone. But the more shaming resembles punishment, through coordination, intent to cause suffering and imposition of material harm, the more it inherits punishment’s justificatory burden.
Applied to this case
In this case, the seven have not been charged, let alone convicted. A university process found some of them responsible for violating its rules; its findings are not public in detail. Public shaming of all seven, on the basis of allegations and partial information, therefore fails the accuracy and process conditions, and probably the proportionality condition. That does not mean no criticism is warranted. It means that the punitive forms of public response, such as harassment, campaigns for dismissal, and doxxing, are not justified on the information available.
Conclusion
Public shaming is a form of punishment, though an informal one: it is unpleasant, condemnatory and deliberately imposed for supposed wrongdoing. Insofar as it shares these features with state punishment, it shares the need for justification: accuracy, proportionality, standing and fair process. Ordinary blame and public criticism need not meet these demanding conditions. But coordinated campaigns designed to make people suffer for allegations do, and in this case they cannot.