Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment

Sarat, Austin; Martschukat, Jürgen

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511974380.001

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“…At present, more than 70 percent of countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice (Hood 2010). The death penalty is also vanishing in several regions of the world, including Europe, which has no capital punishment except for the dictatorship of Belarus (Sarat and Martschukat 2011), and Central and South America, except for Guatemala and Guyana (Hood and Hoyle 2008). Of the 54 countries in Africa, nearly 40 still have capital laws on the books, but only 2 to 7 used execution in any one year over the last decade (Johnson and Zimring 2009, 30).…”

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confidence: 99%

American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

Johnson

2011

Law soc. inq.

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It is often said that American capital punishment fulfills no purposes, serves no functions, and possesses no coherent rationale. In Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2010), David Garland argues that American capital punishment is functional, meaningful, and effective, especially in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse. He also demonstrates that America's radically local version of democracy helps explain why the death penalty has persisted in the United States long after it disappeared in other Western democracies and that many of the peculiar forms through which American capital punishment is now administered have been designed to deny association with the lynchings that have occurred in American history. Garland arrives at these conclusions by comparing capital punishment in contemporary America with death penalty systems from the American past and from other Western nations. This essay argues that comparison with Asia further illuminates what is peculiar—and ordinary—in American capital punishment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

Johnson

2011

Law soc. inq.

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“…The confident prediction that the death penalty will soon completely disappear has become common, expressed by statements such as “Around the world the death penalty is dying out” (The Death Penalty Project, 2018). Leading academics explain that the death penalty is “dying” (Sarat and Martschukat, 2011), reaching the “End of Its Rope” (Garrett, 2017); Radelet (2009: 19) predicted, in 2009, that “[by] 2032, the only scholars writing about ‘the death penalty in America’ will be historians”. A leading human rights lawyer defending in capital cases suggested that “The death penalty is in its death throes” (Stafford-Smith, 2015).…”

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Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

Dudai

2023

Theoretical Criminology

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There is a growing position among human rights advocates, academics and UN officials, predicting “the death of the death penalty”, and forecasting that it will completely disappear soon. This article questions and problematizes this prediction, exploring the assumptions, premises and gaps that underpin the optimistic outlook. Based on analysis of abolitionist discourse, three fallacies are identified and analyzed: a progressive fallacy, assuming the death penalty is a barbaric anachronism in the “civilized” modern world and displaying a teleological belief in its demise; a classificatory fallacy, entailing defining-down the prevalence of the death penalty through the category of “de-facto abolition”; and a functional fallacy, assuming that repudiating the death penalty as a crime-fighting tool will cause its demise, overlooking its transformation into an institution serving political-symbolic functions. In concluding, I suggest viewing the global death penalty as bifurcated: dying as an ordinary law-enforcement tool, but relatively healthy as an extraordinary political symbol.

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Introduction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Capital Punishment

Cited by 2 publications

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American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

Dead or alive? Reassessing the health of the death penalty and the prospects of global abolition

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