Death Penalty

The United States is the only Western democratic nation to practice capital punishment in the 21st century. Lethal injection was introduced in the late 1970s as a more palatable alternative to evidently brutal methods of execution such as electrocution, hanging, and firing squads. Today, executions are staged as a quasi-medical procedure in which the inmate/patient is put to sleep – and put to death – on a gurney, hooked up to an IV machine, sometimes with the direct participation of medical professionals such as anesthesiologists. Medical knowledge and authority is both invoked to justify the practice of lethal injection and also strictly limited in its capacity to critique, or even to optimize, this practice.  In the Supreme Court case, Baze v Rees (2008), prisoners on Kentucky’s death row called for the use of medical technology and expertise to minimize pain during execution.  The court denied their request, but in response to a dissenting opinion, many states introduced manual “consciousness checks” which function as both a both biopolitical ritual of care and a necropolitical ritual of social death. Following Foucault, this chapter analyses the current practice of lethal injection in the US as a form of ‘grotesque sovereignty’ or Ubu-esque power.

Published in The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Ed. Anne Whitehead and Angela Woods. Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

The Mexican Revolution (1910-20) produced modern, industrialized death for the first time in the history of the Americas and previewed the coming World War. Hundreds if not thousands of executions took place during the Revolution, and all of the major revolutionary factions executed perceived traitors and prisoners of war. Despite the massive subjective experience with death, historians of Mexico have largely avoided treating the Revolution as war, or dealing with the collective experience of violence. This paper examines what the collective memory of executions can teach us about the subjective experience of violence during the Revolution, and how, through their patterned form and mass-mediation, executions became the pre-eminent symbol of Revolutionary Mexico at home and abroad. The paper argues that images of executions became a black legend of Revolutionary Mexico that masked the jarring experience of economic modernization and social dislocation at the heart of the Mexican Revolution and the modern mass death it produced. This mythology sustained both a popular cult of the dead that questioned and undermined the ideological pretensions of post-Revolutionary political leaders, but also, paradoxically, helped to sustain essentialist tropes of Mexican backwardness and violence.

People abused by angry discipline as children, may tend to abuse or overly punish other people or themselves for perceived wrongs in their adult life. In some individuals, aggressive personality traits may be genetically inherited. The aggressive personality may feel weakened by having guidelines or boundaries for anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, and these guidelines can help express anger in a healthy way.

Il caso Furman v. Georgia ha fatto credere agli Stati Uniti nel 1972 che la pena capitale non sarebbe mai più tornata in vigore. Contro questa aspettativa, invece, quattro anni dopo la stessa Corte suprema, in Gregg v. Georgia, statuì la costituzionalità della pena di morte. Furman v. Georgia non è solo un caso sulla costituzionalità della pena di morte, ma anche sui “dilemmi” che i giudici sono chiamati ad affrontare quando devono pronunciarsi su un problema costituzionalmente “controverso”, moralmente “impegnativo” e politicamente “dibattuto”.

This is a detailed review of my best-selling book Drinking with Ghosts: The Aftermath of Apartheid's Dirty War (BestRed, South Africa, 2014) by Dr Iain Edwards in the South African Journal of Science, May-June 2015. The book was long-listed for the 2015 Alan Paton Award, and long-listed for the Academy of Science of South Africa’s 2016 Humanities Book Award.

espanolDesde la Antiguedad la pena de muerte es aplicada como castigo analogo a la accion cometida contra la vida y los credos religiosos. La religion habia asimilado esta sancion como una forma de salvaguardar a los no pecadores, de aquellas personas consideradas como peligrosas para la fe. Su discusion es de larga data y las posiciones a favor y en contra, siempre se'han hecho presentes, En America Latina, las altos indices de criminalidad llevan a que sectores sociales exijan se discuta sobre la necesidad de la aplicacion de la pena capital, como forma de combatir. la inseguridad, lo que desde lo teorico contrapone las teorias retributivas y utilitarias, asi como la normativa internacional en materia de proteccion de derechos humanos. EnglishSince ancient times, death penalty has been applied as a punishmentthat deserves those who attempt against lile and against religious beliefs, Religion had assimilated sanction as a way to preserve it from sinners, people considered as da...

This thesis is primarily an examination into Eberhard Jüngel’s concept of theological anthropology. Secondarily, this thesis examines how Jüngel’s theological anthropology can support the correction that Howard Zehr for in his book Changing Lenses. Zehr proposes that a better approach to our penal system would be to transition it from a retributive justice orientation to a restorative justice orientation. While Zehr makes a very good point, his biblical theological approach to supporting why such a change can be supported from a Christian perspective neglects the doctrine of justification, relegating it to a side note at the end of the discussion. It is the opinion of this author that Jüngel’s theological anthropology with its emphasis on the doctrine of the justification of sinners is the groundwork for Christian support for a program like Victim Offender Reconciliation program.

In the mid-1990s, as public trust in big government was near an all-time low, 80% of Americans told Gallup that they supported the death penalty. Why did people who didn’t trust government to regulate the economy or provide daily services nonetheless believe that it should have the power to put its citizens to death?

That question is at the heart of Executing Freedom, a powerful, wide-ranging examination of the place of the death penalty in American culture and how it has changed over the years. Drawing on an array of sources, including congressional hearings and campaign speeches, true crime classics like In Cold Blood, and films like Dead Man Walking, Daniel LaChance shows how attitudes toward the death penalty have reflected broader shifts in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. Emerging from the height of 1970s disillusion, the simplicity and moral power of the death penalty became a potent symbol for many Americans of what government could do—and LaChance argues, fascinatingly, that it’s the very failure of capital punishment to live up to that mythology that could prove its eventual undoing in the United States.

Il faut savoir s'adapter. Sans doute est-il naïf ou présomptueux de publier des livres de plus de 150 pages et d'exposer dans le détail la complexité des événements et les stratégies des acteurs, grands et petits. Dont acte. Alors en une page, le pitch.

This paper, an Evaluation of Jacques Derrida's position on Death Penalty; A case against the Abolitionist, is aimed at raising logical arguments against the abolitionist by providing basis for the justification of Death penalty, while exposing the merits and demerits of the argument of Jacque Derrida in support of the abolition of capital punishment. Responding to Derrida Death penalty Seminar of 1999/2000 which took an abolitionist stance against the practice of death penalty, this paper argued that, Derrida's de construction of theologico-Political concept of the sovereign right over life and death in view of abolishing capital punishment, should be understood in terms of the unconditional renunciation of sovereignty as called for in Derrida's later political writing, Rogues in particular. This paper thus, adopted the overlapping philosophical method of historical, critical and hermeneutical analysis, evaluation and prescription to web together its arguments in support of Capital Punishment while giving special attention to the positions of Jacque Derrida with regards to the idea of death penalty. The work made a case against the Abolitionist by providing basis for the justification of Death penalty. It is the opinion of this paper that, even the capital punishment is not enough to right a wrong or engender justice. Rather restitution should also be made on the side of the offender in other forms while also giving his life as a punishment. It is often perceived that the lextalions is principle is the apogee of punishment when applied to serious crimes, especially culpable homicide. This work sets up yet a higher bar anchored on the perspective of critical cogitation and replaces this prescription of " tooth for a tooth and eye for an eye " with some teeth for teeth and the eyes for an eye " advancing arguments to move the frontiers of debate on capital punishment forward

This paper reviews death penalty perspectives from the United States, Mexico and international law. The United States practices the death penalty on not only its citizens, but those of other nations who commit capital crimes. Mexico is a death penalty abolitionist state that takes significant issue with the United States over executing Mexican nationals. The paper analyzes the cultural, legal and political conflict between the two countries surrounding the application of the death penalty on Mexican nationals.

A number of representative polls have been conducted on the death penalty in recent decades, mainly in the United States, but also in many other countries. Their quality and the usability of their data were different; however, there were some surveys whose authors were interested not only in the percentage of supporters and opponents of the death penalty in a given society at the time of the survey, but also in whether this rate varies in different strata of society and, if so, why. Several polls were conducted, in which, in addition to socio-cultural factors, respondents were asked about their general attitudes (values, religiosity, political preferences, etc.), and some research was also conducted in order to uncover the reasons behind the responses of the interviewees. From all of this, one can gain a clear picture as regards the socio-cultural characteristics of people in general, who are more in favour of the death penalty, as well as regarding what general attitudes respondents have and for what reasons they formed their (either pro- or anti-death penalty) views. The subsequent presentation of the Hungarian surveys will help one to see whether distance in time affects the perception of the social need for capital punishment, and how such need changes over time. Overall, the aim of this study is to present a comprehensive (country- and culture-independent) human approach to the death penalty; that is, the goal is not to examine how many people have supported or opposed the death penalty in a particular country in a given period of time, but to find out what factors influence commitment to or against capital punishment and the causes thereof, and what factors can change people’s attitudes towards the death penalty.

A thorough analysis of capital punishment from a political-geographical perspective is lacking in the discipline of geography. This is despite the fact that capital punishment overlaps with numerous geographic approaches, concepts, and areas of study. This study serves as a call to geographers to begin considering capital punishment's wide interaction and interrelation with developed areas of knowledge in the discipline. Specifically, political geographers stand to contribute in novel ways to wider discussions about capital punishment by analyzing executions relative to contemporary work in geography on violent, legal, and carceral spaces. I first introduce the need for geography's engagement with this pressing issue. Then, I clarify several terms needed to understand this violent practice. A third section highlights several pathways of development in the critical geographies of capital punishment. It is organized around four broad themes-critically mapping capital punishment, bodies in motion, politics of access, and executing the "other"-connecting capital punishment to developing concepts, literatures, and sub-disciplines in geography. The final two sections outline an epistemological approach to the geographies of capital punishment and how legal and carceral geographies might contribute.

The death penalty is a legal concept mentioned in legal science in general and the science of criminal law in particular. This is the harshest punishment for extremely serious crimes. Historically, the death penalty has been applied since the initial formation of the state and legal system. Today, the death penalty is still applied in many countries around the world notwithstanding the level of socioeconomic development. However, in recent years, the death penalty has been an internationally controversial issue. There are two opposing opinions on this issue, namely maintaining or abolishing this penalty. These controversies focus on two main topics: the morality and legality of the death penalty. Despite the lack of consensus, the general trend of the world today is minimizing the death penalty and moving towards the complete abolishment. Even in the case of countries that do not have a specific roadmap to abolish this penalty in the short term, they tend to reform the execution measures to improve the humanity of such sentence. To achieve the progress of decreasing and moving towards the elimination of death penalty, the United Nations (UN) has played an important role as a driving force \. On 15 December 1989, the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereinafter referred to as the OP2) to abolish the death penalty was adopted by the UN General Assembly in New York (entered into force on 11 July 1991). Currently, this Protocol has 88 member states. The adoption of this Protocol by the General Assembly (UN) demonstrates its determination to mobilize countries to reduce, postpone, and eliminate the death penalty. On a broader scale, based on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and its OP2, the UN also shows the goal of ensuring fair trials and humane treatment for death row inmates. Vietnam is not out of this trend. In recent years, Vietnam has been reforming gradually its criminal law towards reducing the scope of application the capital sentence. This is evident through amendments and supplements of the Penal Code over the years. 3 With the above-mentioned trend of judicial reform, Vietnam may ratify the 2 nd Optional Protocol ICCPR in the future. However, at present, there are still many obstacles preventing Vietnam from joining the Protocol under practical and legal perspectives. Practically, the first thing that Vietnam needs to do to join the Protocol is abolishing the death penalty. However, this faces difficulty-controversial public opinions. From the legal perspective, due to the influence of the above-mentioned social life practices, Vietnam still faces the greatest difficulty that the domestic law is incompatible with the provisions of the 2 nd Optional Protocol ICCPR. Therefore, this topic was selected for research to clarify the issues of the death penalty, the roles of the 2 nd Optional Protocol ICCPR in promoting the elimination of the death penalty, obstacles to Vietnam's future accession, when Viet Nam joins this Protocol.

Race has played a disturbing role in the death penalty’s application throughout its history in the United States. During slavery, discrimination was explicitly written in many states’ laws, with a number of capital offenses reserved solely for black slaves. Racial bias continued during the Jim Crow era, in which black defendants often received little due process, as trials and executions sometimes both took place in a single day. Today, the race of the victim has a significant impact on who gets the death penalty, with the implication that black lives matter less.

The birth of criminology as a science at the end of the XIXth century led to the development of many observations and experiments. The purpose of all these researches was to find, in a positivist point of view, some means to fight or to eliminate crime. As a consequence, jurists deeply renewed their approaches of penal law and the function of penalty. I’ll try here to understand how some new penal notions were developed after WW2, which led to a new intellectual frame when the abolitionist debate began its rise at the end of the 1950s.

Essential topos of the work of Cesare Beccaria, and legacy of the most important of On Crimes and Punishments, is the condemnation of the death penalty, accompanied by the peroration of life imprisonment as an effective alternative. In this contribution I intend to support the possibility of going beyond Beccaria, calling for the abolition of life imprisonment as the fulfillment of the abolitionist choice of capital punishment undertaken thanks to his work.

Whilst the condition of a damaged ethical life has received due scholarly attention to date, only rarely is resistance to it conceived as an actual possibility with the potential of real effects on a macro-social scale. This is not just a curious lacuna in the literature. To ignore or miss concrete possibilities or even instances of resistance is to reinforce the apparent naturalness and inevitability of structures of injustice. The aim of this edited collection is to help address this epistemological neglect, exploring the multiplicity of motives, presuppositions, sites, ways, and consequences of acts of resistance. As shown in the ensuing contributions, resistance can be recalcitrant or transformative in its aims, discursive or physical in its means, and local or generalised in its loci. If there is a single argument that can be distilled, it is that the emergence of progressive resistance entails the incessant rational critique of so-styled ‘common sense’ and prevalent ethical claims–a process which could be called ‘the banality of good’. Contributors (in alphabetical order): Andrea Mubi Brighenti, Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Lilie Chouliaraki, Spiros Gangas, Richard Kearney, Alison Liebling, John O’Neill, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Justice Tankebe, Ezra Tessler, Sappho Xenakis.


Contents

List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

1. Roots, Rites, and Sites of Resistance: The Banality of Good: An Introduction
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

2. Values, Crisis, and Resistance: Prospects for Freedom Reconsidered
Spiros Gangas

3. Narcissism, Humanism, and the Revolutionary Character in Erich Fromm’s Work
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

4. Thinking after Terror: An Interreligious Challenge
Richard Kearney

5. Ecce Homo: The Political Theology of Good and Evil
John O’Neill

6. Resistance as Transformation
Andrea Mubi Brighenti

7. Acting on Vulnerable Others: Ethical Agency in Media Discourse
Lilie Chouliaraki

8. Sites of Resistance: Death Row Homepages and the Politics of Compassion
Ezra Tessler

9. Face to Face with Abidoral Queiroz: Death Squads and Democracy in Northeast Brazil
Nancy Scheper-Hughes

10. Resisting Submission? The Obstinacy of ‘Balkan’ Characteristics in Greece as Dissidence against ‘The West’
Sappho Xenakis

11. Legitimation and Resistance: Police Reform in the (Un)Making
Justice Tankebe

12. ‘Governmentality’ and Governing Corrections: Do Senior Managers Resist?
Alison Liebling

Il volume illumina la vicenda umana e scientifica di André Tiraqueau, un magistrato attivo per buona parte della sua vita in provincia, anche se destinato a sedere infine nel Parlement di Parigi, nei cui scritti si rispecchiano la cultura, le convinzioni, i valori, in una parola la Weltanschauung della nutrita schiera di giuristi e funzionari regi che sta assumendo con mano sicura la guida della nazione in un'epoca densa di grandi cambiamenti politici, sociali, culturali e religiosi. André Tiraqueau si pone quale significativa figura di giureconsulto che incarna egregiamente alcune delle caratteristiche salienti della cultura giuridica francese nella prima metà del secolo XVI. tra le molte sue opere, alcuni scritti che a nostro avviso si segnalano per originalità e dottrina, nel pur ricchissimo panorama della produzione giuridica d'Oltralpe in età rinascimentale. I trattati "De nobilitate" e "De poenis temperandis", insieme al monumentale lavoro "De legibus connubialibus et iure maritali", sono in modi diversi dedicati ad una reale sperimentazione, relativa tanto ai generi letterari impiegati, quanto soprattutto ai contenuti in essi riversati. In particolare, nel caso del "De legibus connubialibus et iure maritali", ci troviamo di fronte ad un'opera nella quale Tiraqueau pone la propria straripante cultura umanistica al servizio della soluzione della "quaestio de matrimonio", nella sua duplice articolazione, circa il problema della scelta della moglie ed in merito al comportamento da tenere verso la consorte dopo le nozze. In tale opera, mediante la produzione di una massa enorme di allegazioni dotte tratte da tutti i campi dello scibile, l'autore si propone di dimostrare senza alcun dubbio come la donna sia per natura inferiore al maschio, per carenze oggettive psico-fisiche che devono essere riconosciute e neutralizzate, secondo gli insegnamenti aristotelici.

S'appuyant sur le dépouillement de nombreuses archives, l'ouvrage présente l'histoire de l'application de la peine de mort par les cours d'assises en France métropolitaine. Partant des pulsions punitives présentes dans l'opinion publique, il montre comment les enquêtes judiciaires « construisent » des affaires où la peine de mort est encourue, et les tensions à l'oeuvre dans les procès. La part de la peine de mort dans la répression criminelle, l'évolution du rythme des condamnations, les profils des condamnés à mort sont successivement examinés. Le processus gracieux, qui permet de sauver la tête d'une majorité de condamnés à mort, est étudié dans son fonctionnement et ses variations. La détention de ces condamnés particuliers soulève de nombreuses difficultés, entre souci d'humanité et impératif de sécurité. Le propos s'attache à retracer l'expérience de la préparation à la mort, avant d'aborder les différentes dimensions de l'exécution par guillotine. Une place est aussi accordée à la destinée des condamnés graciés et leur éventuelle réinsertion.

Логвиненко, Є. С. Покарання в праві держав Стародавнього світу: моногр. / Є. С. Логвиненко, І. А. Логвиненко. - Харків : ФОП Панов А.М., 2019. - 252 с. - ISBN 978-617-7722-94-5.Монографія присвячена комплексному історико-правовому дослідженню становлення та розвитку інституту покарання в праві країн Стародавнього світу, виявленню закономірностей та особливостей цього процесу. Автори показали характерні риси становлення інституту покарань та їхні особливості в окремих державах Стародавнього Сходу та Східного Середземномор’я часів античності. Здійснено порівняльно-правовий аналіз призначення та застосування покарань у різних регіонах та окремих державах у давній час. Книга розрахована на істориків, правознавців, викладачів та студентів, усіх, хто цікавиться історію права країн Стародавнього світу.The monograph is focused on the comprehensive historical and legal study of the formation and development of the institution of punishment within the law of the ancient world countries; on re...

Numerous studies indicate that racial minorities are both more likely to be executed for murder and that those who murder them are less likely to be executed than if they murder whites. Death penalty opponents have long attempted to use these studies to argue for a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever the merits of such arguments, they overlook the fact that such discrimination alters the costs of murder; racial discrimination imposes higher costs on minorities for murdering through tougher sentences, and it imposes lower costs on whites for murdering minorities by dispensing weaker sentences. These cost differentials constitute an injustice not simply to actual minority defendants in capital cases, nor simply to the actual minority victims of murder, but to all members of minority communities. I here offer two arguments for a moratorium on capital punishment: The first draws upon evidence of racial discrimination against minority defendants in capital cases, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy equal status under the law. The second draws upon the evidence regarding racial discrimination in relation to the race of victims, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. Thus, by not assigning equal costs to murder, the American criminal justice system fails to provide racial minorities the equality under the law and discounts the value of their lives and liberties. A moratorium is the least unjust response to such a social injustice. I also reply to the criticism that a moratorium prevents us from executing deserving murderers.

In the wake of numerous cruel and troubling execution methods, lethal injection seemed to be the answer to this country’s centuries-long search for a medically humane means of putting an inmate to death. However, lethal injection is currently being subjected to an unprecedented degree of scrutiny due to various factors, including botched executions, problematic protocols, and drug shortages and restrictions.  An historical overview puts these circumstances in context.  In 1977, a year after Gregg v. Georgia, Oklahoma became the first state to adopt lethal injection, despite the fact that the procedure had never been medically or scientifically studied on human beings. Even without proper medical justification, 38 more states adopted lethal injection between 1977 and 2009. As more states began utilizing lethal injection, the method faced more challenges, leading to a decrease in the number of executions being performed. The Supreme Court attempted to address these challenges in Baze v. Rees (2008), in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol. Contrary to some commentators’ predictions, executions continued their downward trend post-Baze. In 2015, the Supreme Court faced another lethal injection challenge in Glossip v. Gross, which involved Oklahoma’s use of midazolam as a lethal injection drug. The Court held 5–4 that three death row inmates failed to establish that midazolam created "a substantial risk of severe pain" when used as the first of three drugs in state's lethal injection procedure. This chapter discusses the Glossip Court’s unwillingness to address key aspects of death penalty history and the blame the Court places on unidentified “anti-death-penalty advocates” for the factors driving lethal injection’s troubles – troubles which threaten the future of the death penalty.

The great similarity between the Jewish and Islamic legal systems in criminal policy, the quality of executions, and the functioning of the Jewish and Islamic Jurisprudence have led some to believe that Islamic law has adopted Jewish law in the death penalty.
Comparative studies in these two religions show In general, Islam endorses Judaism in many execution laws, and in many other executions, such as animal executions, rude juvenile executions, and non-Jewish executions, it is completely against the Jewish law.
In fact, Islamic law does not merely establish a system independent of Jewish law but merely reform it. These Islamic reforms to Jewish law are often in the details, and have usually lowered the penalties.

The present book studies the foundations and criminal purposes of the Jewish and Islamic law for the death penalty, by using the Torah and the Talmud, and Islamic sources, including the Qur'an and Jawaher al-Kalam.
* Language: Persian

A statistical report of 1906 evaluated the place of death sentences in the judicial system, with the main purpose of supporting the bill of abolition of the death penalty (finally rejected). This report showed the negligible role of the capital punishment in the penal repression – as if the guillotine had already fallen into abeyance. According to the Penal Code of 1810, aggravated murders (premeditated murders, murders accompanied by another crime, murders of a public officer), parricides, poisonings, arsons of houses, as well as complicity in and attempt of such crimes, were all punishable by the guillotine. However, a large implementation of the principle of mitigating circumstances allowed to avoid the enforcement of death penalty. Moreover, two thirds of the people sentenced to death were pardoned, often with the support of the juries. The substitute penalty was a perpetual imprisonment, but this “perpetuity” became shorter and shorter after 1945.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the international law ramifications of applying the death penalty for drug offences. It reviews the the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold for the lawful application of capital punishment as established in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It then explores the question of whether drug offences meet this threshold by examining the issue through the lenses of international human rights law, the domestic legislation in retentionist states, international narcotics control law, international refugee law and international criminal law. The article concludes that drug offences do not constitute ‘most serious crimes’, and that executions of people for drug offences violates international human rights law.

Cet ouvrage se donne pour tâche d’examiner les discours les plus emblématiques produits par la philosophie moderne au sujet de la peine de mort. Assumant d’emblée le point de vue abolitionniste, notre intention n’est nullement de « peser le pour et le contre », mais de poser la question suivante : dans quelle mesure est-il possible de fonder rationnellement le refus catégorique de la peine capitale ? À cet égard, le détour par l’histoire de la philosophie nous montre à quel point la raison est avant tout divisée contre elle-même. En effet, au terme d'un travail visant à mettre à l’épreuve la cohérence interne des partisans de la peine de mort (Locke, Kant, Stuart Mill), ainsi que de ses adversaires (Beccaria, Bentham), il nous est apparu impossible de conclure à un simple défaut de rationalité de la part des uns ou des autres. Ce que l'on constate au contraire, c'est que chaque démonstration se déploie à partir d'un certain nombre de principes éthiques indémontrables. Bien plus, chaque grand courant de la philosophie pénale est susceptible de donner lieu à des prises de position radicalement opposées. Mais pour peu que l'on se refuse à concevoir un abîme insurmontable entre la raison d'une part, et la sensibilité d'autre part, la philosophie morale peut bénéficier d'une approche dans laquelle le raisonnement et « le cœur » se complètent, au lieu de constituer une alternative. À cet égard, c'est dans l'œuvre de Jean-Jacques Rousseau qu’il nous a semblé possible de repérer les éléments permettant de fonder au mieux l’abolition.

On 16 December 2012, India erupted in national outrage against the rape of a 23-year-old female student in New Delhi, christened “Nirbhaya” (fearless). In the aftermath, there was a convergence of multiple discourses that framed post-independent India’s feminist consciousness. In 2020, four men convicted of Nirbhaya’s rape and murder were executed. An eight-year old girl in Kashmir was brutally raped and murdered in January 2018. The trial court sentenced the main accused to life in prison. In December 2019, four men held in yet another horrific rape and death of a 27-year veterinarian in Hyderabad were killed by the police in what has been called an extrajudicial killing. More recently, in 2020, a 19-year old was raped and killed in rural Uttar Pradesh. The victims came from different social locations, castes, tribes, and religious communities. This paper presents a feminist critique of the legal discourse on rape and the death penalty. It looks at an ironical cooptation of the cri...

The death penalty is a much disputed aspect of today's criminal justice system. Many people believe that it should be abolished while others believe that it should be harsher on offenders. This research proposal is designed to look at the different emotions and attitudes that affect the death penalty and its usage and determine people's standing on capital punishment because of these attitudes and emotions in order to determine how much of a factor these ideas are in death penalty sentencing and legislation.

Il y a quarante ans, peu après son entrée à l'Elysée, le Président Mitterrand demande à son garde des Sceaux, ministre de la Justice, Robert Badinter, de préparer un projet de loi abolissant la peine de mort. Présenté à l'Assemblée nationale dès le 17 septembre, il se transforme en la loi du 9 octobre 1981, qui met un terme à un débat de plusieurs siècles sur l'efficacité, la nécessité, l'utilité, la moralité ou la légitimité de la peine capitale en France.
L'objet du colloque est à la fois de commémorer l'abolition de 1981 et de la replacer dans un temps long, dont elle est l'aboutissement.

In this essay I take up the question of how death can be a penalty, given that each of us will eventually die. I argue that capital punishment in the United States rests on contradictory demands for painless death delivered humanely through pharmaceuticals and yet denies the accused the possibility of natural death. The death penalty must be at once humane and punishing. Analyzing what we mean by ‘botched’ executions, along with the language of the Supreme Court in upholding lethal injection as a humane application of the death penalty, I argue that the fantasy of instant death is at the heart of the tension between death as painless and death as penalty. In the end, I turn to Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminar Volume One, particularly his discussion of Kant’s defence of the capital punishment, and the pivotal role of time in his discussion. Finally, I suggest that the fantasies of instantaneous death and our technological mastery of it result in the fantasy of the ‘good’ punishing death.

Cosa succede quando il diritto esige un certo comportamento, o nega una certa opportunità, ma questo appare inaccettabile ai cittadini perché in conflitto con le ragioni ultime che giustificano le loro azioni? Il queste situazioni, il diritto diventa immorale. Sono conflitti che investono tipicamente la sfera personale degli individui: il governo del corpo, l’immagine di sé, le relazioni affettive primarie, i progetti di vita. In taluni casi questi conflitti diventano così rilevanti da mobilitare l’opinione pubblica, fino a scatenare vere e proprie battaglie civili combattute da chi rivendica una pretesa che il diritto nega, o contesta un obbligo che esso impone. Attraverso l’analisi della struttura dei conflitti tra diritto e morale e l’esemplificazione di casi paradigmatici – l’eutanasia, il matrimonio tra persone dello stesso sesso, la pena di morte – il libro consente al lettore di costruire un proprio punto di vista sulle questioni in gioco.

This article discusses the constitutional debate on death penalty in Indonesia. This debate resurfaces when a group of death row inmates lodged a judicial review to the Constitutional Court against death penalty articles under the 1997 Narcotics Law, used by the criminal court to sentence them.

Her picture is on the five-pound British note. She brought about prison reform in Britain, which spread to civilized nations in Europe and beyond. Her school of nursing inspired and supported the work of Florence Nightingale. She was the first woman to address Parliament and did so several times. She was visited in her prison-reform work by kings and queens of Denmark and Prussia. She was a recorded Friends minister who provided Bibles for people, established multiple organizations for social reform, challenged the death penalty and slavery, and who was sponsored by Queen Victoria. Referred to as "the Angel of the Prisons," her name was Elizabeth Fry-a noteworthy Friend, indeed!

Sentencing research suggests that offenders who are more physically attractive are more likely to experience leniency in verdict and sentencing. Additionally, there is evidence that other extralegal factors, such as race, influence public and juror opinions on criminality and the appropriate punishment of criminal defendants. Much research on attractiveness, however, has not focused on female offenders or does not explore death penalty opinions. Using a student sample and an online survey with factorial vignettes, this study seeks to examine the likelihood of endorsing the death penalty for a hypothetical female offender relative to her physical attractiveness and race. Results show that attractiveness of the offender did not affect the likelihood of the respondent selecting the death penalty. The race of the offender and victim did affect the likelihood of the respondent selecting the death sentence, with respondents less likely to select the death penalty for African American offenders than white offenders, more likely to select the death penalty in vignettes with African American victims than white victims.

ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies

Vol 14, No 4 (2015)

Table of Contents

Themed Section:
The Sexual Politics of Austerity

Introduction: The Sexual Politics of Austerity
Cesare Di Feliciantonio, Gavin Brown
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1259/1109


Marriage and the Spare Bedroom: Exploring the Sexual Politics of Austerity
Gavin Brown
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1098/1121


Low Income LGBTGNC (Gender Nonconforming) Struggles Over Shelters As Public Space
Michelle Billies
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1125/1123


The Sexual Politics of Neoliberalism and Austerity in an ′Exceptional′ Country: Italy
Cesare Di Feliciantonio
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1104/1122


Queer Responses to Austerity: Insights from the Greece of Crisis
Konstantinos Eleftheriadis
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1159/1128



Themed Section:
Geographies of Capital Punishment in the United States: The Execution of Troy Davis

Introduction: Geographies of Capital Punishment in the United States - The Execution of Troy Davis.
Joshua F Inwood
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1082/1129


If I am Troy Davis, I Failed Troy Davis: Abolishing the Death Penalty through an Antiracist People’s Geography
Nik Heynen
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1084/1130

Bare Life, Dead Labor, and Capital(ist) Punishment
James Andrew Tyner, Alex Colucci
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1155/1131


Life and Death in the Racial State: Collateral Consequences and the Execution of Troy Davis.
Joshua F Inwood, Melanie Barron
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1083/1133


Justice versus justice: Geographies of the Death Penalty and Place-Based Activism in the Troy Davis Case
Audrey Kobayashi
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1072/1135



Research

Reframing urban controlled spaces: Community gardens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Efrat Eizenberg, Tovi Fenster
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1161/1136


Latin America’s Large-Scale Urban Challenges: Development Failures and Public Service Inequalities in Lima, Peru
Antonio Ioris
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1189/1138


Palestinian, Arab, American, Muslim: “Looping Effects” of Categories and Meaning
Anna Mansson McGinty
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1156/1139


With the Current, Against the Wind: Constructing Spatial Activism and Radical Politics in the Tel-Aviv Gay Center
Chen Misgav
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1160/1140


For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University
Alison Mountz, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, Winifred Curran
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1058/1141


Making Space for Critical Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Struggles and Possibilities
The University of Kentucky Critical Pedagogy Working Group, Carrie Mott, Sandra Zupan, Anne-Marie Debbane, R. L.*
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1296/1143


Inner-Suburban Neighbourhoods, Activist Research, and the Social Space of the Commercial Street
Heather McLean, Katharine Rankin, Kuni Kamizaki
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1295/1144


„Naturgesetze der Kultur“: Die Wiener Geographen und die Ursprünge der „Volks- und Kulturbodentheorie“
Norman Henniges
http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1076/1146