Hello, I’m Zhan Qingyun.

Last time we distinguished civil from criminal proceedings and reached a fundamental question: what is punishment for?

The Supreme Court denied the unmarried mother’s request concerning prosecution because whether the father went to prison did not directly affect her interest.

In other words, another person’s prosecution and punishment are not your personal legal interest. The satisfaction of revenge is no longer recognized as legitimate. Behind the ruling lies a change in punishment’s purpose.

Punishment can serve only a public interest. A private citizen cannot claim a personal legal stake in seeing another person convicted, deprived of freedom, and made to pay. Law no longer recognizes vengeance as that kind of interest.

Law not only forbids private violent retaliation; it no longer exists to retaliate on someone’s behalf. Criminal punishment is justified only by the public interest it protects.

If the ruling stopped there, many listeners might object but still accept its narrow result.

We could say the mother’s lawyer chose a weak strategy. A better lawyer might have argued that the threat of prosecution would make the father more likely to pay support.

Government action would then connect with her personal economic interest; this particular case simply failed to explain the link.

But the Court’s opinion abruptly turned from the facts to the broader question of whether anyone has a personal stake in another person’s prosecution.

Without being asked, the Court considered more generally whether a private person has standing to challenge prosecutorial policy.

It concluded that a citizen who is neither being prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution cannot challenge such policy.

Most Supreme Court cases produce a unanimous opinion, which is difficult to challenge. This one divided five to four: five justices rejected the mother’s appeal and four disagreed.

The Court has nine members and one Chief Justice, but each has one vote and the majority controls. The Chief resembles a meeting chair: everyone discusses the odd child-support case, then votes. Here the result was five to four for dismissal.

If the Chief belongs to the majority, the Chief assigns someone to write the Court’s opinion. Otherwise the majority chooses its own author.