ABSTRACT. Dubber provides a systematic overview of the victims’ role throughout the entirety of penal law. Dubber says that an inquiry into the legitimacy of American penal law would not set its sights quite as high as the discovery of a universal grammar of criminal law. Dubber develops a new code-based, comparative, and comprehensive program for American penal law. The discipline of American penal law must come to see itself as part and parcel of its subject (the praxis of American penal law).