Proportion

Punishment may rise to match the full harm an act actually causes -- consequences included -- and no further. The measure is the harm done, not the thing taken: a thief's ceiling is the loss of everything they own, because by taking what was not theirs they forfeit the protection of what is. When theft runs deep enough to cost lives -- resources stripped until people die -- the harm is death, and death becomes the proportionate ceiling. An act that harms no one carries no punishment at all: words that merely offend take no body, property, or freedom, so there is no death for insulting a prophet, a god, or a ruler. Proportion is a ceiling, not a duty: the victim may always take less -- forgive, or stop short -- but no one may punish beyond the harm caused. To exceed it is revenge, and whoever escalates becomes an aggressor with a victim of their own. This is what lets a nomocracy meet every wrong with force equal to its weight -- small for the small, total for the deadly, nothing for the harmless -- never blind, never limitless.