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Sebastián is currently working on philosophical problems surrounding the justification of state punishment, and specifically on those related to the authority to punish and its permissibility. Because he believes that a successful justification of punishment is bound to depend at least partially on a successful justification of the criminal law as a whole, he does not stand with most legal moralists on their approach to the justification of punishment. But since he also believes that the idea of justice, on which the political justification of the criminal law is grounded, is distinctively moral, he does not stand with those arguing in favour of a purely political justification of punishment seemingly devoid of moral contents. Thus, he is trying to show in his PhD that a ‘public law’ conception of criminal law should be compatible with the concern for the moral justification of punishment.