Lawyering for Change: A Case Study in Efforts to Abolish the Death Penalty

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Over the past fifty years, there have been dramatic ebbs and flows in support for, and application of, the death penalty in the United States. Lawyers have played key roles in these shifts--through their in-court work and through other forms of organizing and advocacy. We will begin the seminar by examining the law and politics regarding the Supreme Court's invalidation of all death penalty statutes in 1972, and the central roles lawyers played in that result. We will then turn to states' successful efforts (advanced by lawyers) to secure judicial approval of revised capital-punishment systems in 1976. For the 20 years that followed, support for capital punishment continued to grow, and no state had come close to abolishing the death penalty. Over the past 15 years, by contrast, ten states have abolished capital punishment, and three other states have in place moratoria on executions. The number of death sentences imposed nationally, which reached 315 in 1996, has been 18 for each of the past two years. This seminar endeavors to understand the rise and fall of the death penalty by way of an extended case study of the State of Illinois--a particularly interesting jurisdiction because of the dramatic events leading to abolition and the rapid pace of change: in an eight-year period, it went from a death row of 171 to outright abolition of the death penalty. We will focus especially on the roles that lawyers played in bringing about this transformation, both in their service on individual cases and also as advocates in the service of a movement. The aim of the seminar is to invite a broad, yet critical understanding of the ways in which lawyers have been and can be instruments of social change--lessons that resonate well beyond the field of capital punishment. Students may elect to write a substantial research paper (on a topic to be decided upon after consultation with…