Is the death penalty dying? : European and American perspectives /

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Bibliographic Details
Imprint:Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Description:1 online resource (xi, 329 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/12599533
Hidden Bibliographic Details
Other authors / contributors:Sarat, Austin, editor.
Martschukat, Jürgen, editor.
ISBN:9780511974380 (ebook)
9780521763516 (hardback)
9781107634275 (paperback)
Notes:Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
Summary:Is the Death Penalty Dying? provides a careful analysis of the historical and political conditions that shaped death penalty practice on both sides of the Atlantic from the end of World War II to the twenty-first century. This book examines and assesses what the United States can learn from the European experience with capital punishment, especially the trajectory of abolition in different European nations. As a comparative sociology and history of the present, the book seeks to illuminate the way death penalty systems and their dissolution work, by means of eleven chapters written by an interdisciplinary group of authors from the United States and Europe. This work will help readers see how close the United States is to ending capital punishment and some of the cultural and institutional barriers that stand in the way of abolition.
Other form:Print version: 9780521763516
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: transatlantic perspectives on capital punishment: national identity, the death penalty, and the prospects for abolition
  • Part I. What Is a Penalty of Death: Capital Punishment in Context
  • 1. The green, green grass of home: capital punishment and the penal system from a long-term perspective
  • 2. Did anyone die here? Legal personalities, the supermax and the politics of abolition
  • 3. Capital punishment as homeowners insurance: the rise of the homeowner citizen and the fate of ultimate sanctions in both Europe and the United States
  • Part II. On the Meaning of Death and Pain in Europe and the United States: Viewing, Witnessing, Understanding
  • 4. The witnessing of judgment: between error, mercy, and vindictiveness
  • 5. Unframing the death penalty: transatlantic discourse on the possibility of abolition and the execution of Saddam Hussein
  • 6. Executions and the debate about abolition in France and in the U.S.
  • Part III. Abolitionist Discourses/Abolitionist Strategies/Abolitionist Dilemmas: Transatlantic Perspectives
  • 7. Civilized rebels: death penalty abolition in Europe as cause, mark of distinction, and political strategy
  • 8. The death of dignity
  • 9. Sovereignty and the unnecessary penalty of death: European and United States perspectives
  • 10. European policy on the death penalty
  • 11. In the shadow of death: capital punishment, mass incarceration, and penal policy in the United States