The Killing State Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture

by Sarat, Austin

• ISBN13: 9780195146028
• ISBN10: 0195146026
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-05-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Over 7,000 people have been legally executed in the United States this century, and over 3,000 men and women now sit on death rows across the country awaiting the same fate. Since the Supreme Court temporarily halted capital punishment in 1972, the death penalty has returned with a vengeance.Today there appears to be a widespread public consensus in favor of capital punishment and considerable political momentum to ensure that those sentenced to death are actually executed. Yet the death penalty remains troubling and controversial for many people. The Killing State: Capital Punishmentin Law, Politics, and Culture explores what it means when the state kills and what it means for citizens to live in a killing state, helping us understand why America clings tenaciously to a punishment that has been abandoned by every other industrialized democracy.Edited by a leading figure in socio-legal studies, this book brings together the work of ten scholars, including recognized experts on the death penalty and noted scholars writing about it for the first time. Focused more on theory than on advocacy, these bracing essays open up new questions forscholars and citizens: What is the relationship of the death penalty to the maintenance of political sovereignty? In what ways does the death penalty resemble and enable other forms of law's violence? How is capital punishment portrayed in popular culture? How does capital punishment express the newpolitics of crime, organize positions in the "culture war," and affect the structure of American values? This book is a timely examination of a vitally important topic: the impact of state killing on our law, our politics, and our cultural life.

Author Biography

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He has written and edited many books and articles on the theory and practice of law, and was recently elected President of the Law and Society Association.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. xi
Capital Punishment as a Legal, Political, and Cultural Fact: an Introduction	p. 3
The Politics of State Killing	p. 25
After the Terror: Mortality, Equality, Fraternity	p. 27
Abolishing the Death Penalty Even for the Worst Murderers	p. 40
Notes	p. 53
A Juridical Frankenstein, or Death in the Hands of the State	p. 60
Notes	p. 77
Tokens of Our Esteem: Aggravating Factors in the Era of Deregulated Death Penalties	p. 81
Notes	p. 110
Captical Punishment and Legal Values	p. 115
Always More to Do"""": Capital Punishment and the (de)composition of Law	p. 117
The Executioner's Dissonant Song: on Capital Punishment and American Legal Values	p. 137
Notes	p. 147
Selling a Quick Fix for Boot Hill: The Myth of Justice Delayed in Death Cases	p. 148
Notes	p. 165
The Death Penalty and the Culture of Responsibility	p. 185
The Will, Capital Punishment, and Cultural War	p. 187
Beyond Intention: a Critique of the """"Normal"""" Criminal Agency, Responsibility, and Punishment in American Death Penalty Jurisprudence	p. 206
Notes	p. 221
The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment: Responsibility and Representation in Dead Man Walking and Last Dance	p. 226
Notes	p. 248
Index	p. 257
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