The volume argued that the republican approach can serve better than any other goal-oriented approach, such as utilitarianism, and better than any approach built around the constrain of delivering just deserts. Von Hirsch and Ashworth, who are leading retributivists, maintained that the republican theory is unsatisfactory in the area of sentencing policy. However, they have ignored the difference between republicanism and other consequentialist approaches. Republicanism and retributivism are similar in that they would each have the courts look backwards to the offense committed in determining the sentences. However, the two approaches differ in that republican theorists provide a deeper level of analysis, look to rectifying the offense rather than repaying it, and consider a much wider range of possible penalties than do retributivists, who usually focus only on severe treatment. Footnotes