Like nibbler said, you would not be justified in shooting the robber later. You may have been when he invaded your home because you felt some amount of fear for your life.
I am actually a bit confused about what I was reading and will mark one part with a * so someone can explain better, but I am pretty sure about the rest.
Unlike positivist legal systems (rape is 3-5 years in jail or whatever), libertarian punishment theory only sets a maximum limit for punishment. You could choose, even stipulate in your will, to totally forgive a thief or murderer. Likewise, you could agree on $X instead of whatever the punishment would have been.
The theory is about retribution. Besides getting back what you are owed, you are entitled to the “costs of capture”. A lot of times that may be something paid to the private security firm you have hired. In this case though, maybe you took off that morning and spent a quarter tank of gas driving around the neighborhood because you thought the thief was that one local punk kid.
Another added cost to the criminal is what Walter Block calls “a premium for scaring”. In your case, nobody was killed so the criminal does not “owe a life”. I suspect this premium would usually be translated to currency, but Block explains that the criminal actually should be forced to play Russian roulette with the # of bullets proportional to the number of chambers based on how big of a threat that was posed.
If the neighbor’s son jumped your fence when you are away on vacation and grabbed something from your yard, this might be 1 bullet to thousands of chambers. If a criminal with a history of violence took your family hostage for hours, held a knife to your wife’s throat and said several times he would kill you all, you might get pretty close to a fully loaded revolver.
*This theory isn’t often talked about and can raise a lot of questions. The basic part about retribution is described as “one tooth (or two teeth) for a tooth” somewhere, meaning I think:
You get back the item that was taken from you, but also “the criminal has what he did, done to him as well”. So, a thief takes your car and now owes you two cars plus the premiums I noted? For some reason this seems odd to me. I also don’t know how punishment could be decided on if someone has destroyed something unique like a Mona Lisa
Also, the theory centers around (vs. positivist state legal systems) no central figure between parties A and B with a monopoly on violence and serving justice. If that is true, who decides the number of bullets and chambers for what I like to call the “terror premium”? Is the answer that you track down the criminal with the thigh wound and negotiate a 6 bullet, 20 chamber murder machine setup after he refuses to agree to some monetary payment? When is arbitration compulsory? When is imprisonment justified?
Anyhow, to answer the question I thought was going to be asked in this thread:
As long as the punishment is correct, there should be no expiration date on justice being served. Like in the case of the Nuremberg Trials, there is no problem with ex post facto, or “after the fact” law. I could decree that 30 babies must be killed every Tuesday and it would violate libertarian principles no matter what.
