united-states criminal-law legal-terms
What does &quot;punishable merit&quot; mean?
<p>I was wondering what 'punishable merit' means in this text.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who was heavily involved in the process, defended the use of past practice by pointing to the intractable disagreement within the commission: “Why didn’t the Commission sit down and really go and rationalize this thing and not just take history? The short answer to that is: we couldn’t. We
couldn’t because there are such good arguments all over the place pointing in opposite directions … Try listing all the crimes that there are in rank order of punishable merit … Then collect results from your friends and see if they all match. I will tell you they won’t.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From <em>Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment</em> by Kahneman, Daniel​.</p>

<p>This doesn't seem to be a standard phrase; all relevant Google hits lead back to Breyer's quote.  So we just have to infer the meaning from the definitions of the words and the context.</p>
<p>You might be confused by the use of &quot;merit&quot; since it is often used to refer to the <em>good</em> qualities of someone or something.  But more generally it can refer to either good or bad qualities.  See e.g. definition 6 at <a href="https://www.wordreference.com/definition/merit" rel="noreferrer">https://www.wordreference.com/definition/merit</a>: &quot;something that is deserved, whether good or bad.&quot;</p>
<p>So I would read this sentence as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Try listing all the crimes that there are, ordered by how much they deserve to be punished.</p>
</blockquote>
