  This argument can be developed as follows. Just as slaves are dependent on their masters, so we are dependent on one another in the absence of a framework of legal rights: just as masters wrong their slaves, however well they treat them, so we are doomed to wrong one another if no such framework exists. To avoid this, we need more than just rights that exist on paper. We need sufficient assurance that our rights will be respected, and we need a mechanism by which their supremacy can be reasserted in the face of wilful violation. Criminal law’s value lies in giving us what we need. Criminal punishment amounts to reassertion. Crime prevention provides reassurance. At the level of function, this is what the last section called a mixed view. But the value of fulfilling both functions is one and the same: it is the value of securing our independence from one another, so we cease to relate to one another as master and slave, and begin to do so as independent beings. As it is often associated (rightly or wrongly) with Kant’s political philosophy, we can call this the Kantian view.