Topic: the Death Penalty

Catalog description

The United States, almost alone among constitutional democracies, retains death as a criminal punishment. This course examines the legal, social, and ethical implications of capital punishment in the United States, with a particular focus on Supreme Court decisions since the early 1970s. During the semester we will critically assess modern executions by identifying the (1) social factors that influence our mold our individual and collective understandings of the death penalty, and (2) the legal and empirical analyses that expose students to capital punishment as a researchable subject. Topical areas will examine the following dimensions of America's death penalty: its history, current status, public support/opposition, judicial tinkering that has narrowed the death penalty's scope, race and capital punishment, and its impact and efficacy. In doing so, we will unpack the moral complexity and ambiguities of deciding who lives and who dies when capital punishment is interpreted (in a practical and constitutional sense) and applied in practice by less than perfect humans.