Philip Pettit has made central to modern republican theory a distinctive account of freedom—republican freedom. On this account, I am not free solely because I can make choices without interference. I am truly free, only if that non-interference does not itself depend on another’s forbearance (what Pettit calls ‘formal’ freedom). Pettit believes that the principal justification for the traditional focus of the criminal law is that it constitutes a bulwark against domination. I will, in part, be considering the merits of this claim. Is the importance of the orthodox realm of the criminal law solely or mainly explained by the wish to protect people from domination? In short, the answer is that it is not. Across the board, the criminal law rightly protects us equally from threats to what Pettit calls ‘effective,’ as opposed to formal, republican freedom. I will develop my critique of Pettit’s account of criminal law, in part to raise questions about the role of ‘domination’ in political theory, and about whether it poses a significant challenge to liberal accounts of criminal law.

菲利普·佩蒂特（Philip Pettit）使现代共和理论的中心成为对自由的独特描述-共和自由。因此，我并不是唯一有自由的人，因为我可以不受干扰地做出选择。只有在这种不干扰本身不取决于他人的宽容（佩蒂特称之为“正式”自由）的情况下，我才真正自由。佩蒂特认为，刑法传统重点的主要理由是，它构成了反对统治的堡垒。我将在某种程度上考虑这一主张的优点。保护人们免受统治的愿望是仅仅还是主要地解释了刑法中正统领域的重要性？简而言之，答案是事实并非如此。全面而言，刑法正确地保护了我们免受威胁，而不是受到佩蒂特所谓的“有效”的威胁，而不是正式的，共和自由。我将对佩蒂特对刑法的解释进行批评，部分是就“统治”在政治理论中的作用以及它是否对自由主义的刑法解释构成重大挑战提出疑问。