“Why is the State allowed to punish?” This is the prominent underlying question of every serious examination of criminal law. The author’s answer covers a broad range of fundamental legal issues. Following the republican idea of freedom, he conceives punishable wrongdoing as a violation of the duty to contribute to the maintenance of the legal system. In its practice of punishment, the legal community demonstrates the correlation between the performance of the citizens’ duty of cooperation and their enjoyment of personal freedom. Nevertheless, practitioners of criminal law cannot escape their responsibility for the hardships associated with the imposition of punishments. They cannot help but strive for a balanced relationship between their professional activities and their personal integrity. With its combination of arguments from the fields of philosophy and of the theory of crime, the book is the result of the author’s long-term examination of the fundamental issues of criminal law.