The concept of punishment logically precedes its legal instantiation, as Feinberg's distinction between punishment and mere penalties shows that the expressive and censuring functions of punishment operate independently of state apparatus.

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Censuring(as a key function punishment serves): Expressing strong disapproval or blame toward someone's actions; it's about saying 'what you did was wrong,' not just punishing them.
Expressive function(describing what punishment does beyond just causing discomfort): The way punishment communicates society's disapproval or condemnation of a wrongful act, like how a jail sentence says 'this behavior is seriously wrong.'
Feinberg(another key scholar cited in discussions of posthumous harm): Joel Feinberg, a 20th-century philosopher who wrote extensively about rights, harm, and whether someone can be wronged after their death.
Legal instantiation(referring to how ideas become actual laws): The moment when an abstract idea becomes real and concrete through the law—for example, when the concept of punishment actually gets written into a legal code and enforced by courts.

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