Reflections on Capital Punishment
One Side of an Uncompleted Discussion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20384137 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Tushnet (0000-0002-9316-0905, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 21 |
| Publication date | 1989-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Law and Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0748-0814 • E-ISSN: 2163-3088 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1051191 |
| OpenAlex | W2068883717 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 2 |
Bob Cover's work was, at the end, explicitly concerned with the law as an instrument of violence. Unsurprisingly, then, he addressed himself to the question of capital punishment. Surprisingly, though, he said “I am not an abolitionist” — surprisingly, that is, to those who understood that Cover was a radical in politics and who believed that because one touchstone of contemporary liberalism is opposition to the death penalty, radicals (who are however not liberals, after all) should support abolition of the death penalty. As Avi Soifer said, “We all are the worse for being unable to argue about that issue with Cover, and therefore to learn from him.” In this essay I want to think about why someone who is drawn to Cover's legal thought, as I am, might be inclined to take a similar position to his on the death penalty. I hasten to add, though, that I do not pretend here to represent Cover's thought; I have no idea why he was not an abolitionist, only why I am ambivalent about the death penalty. Nor do I have any reason to believe that the lines of argument that I will sketch here are ones that Cover would have found acceptable or even interesting
Ambivalence · Capital punishment · Epistemology · Law and economics · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sketch · Sociology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Torture, Ethics, and Law
| Citations per year | 0.05 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2005 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |