Person:

Steiker, Carol

The article considers the contributions of law professor Jeffrie Murphy of the Arizona State University to the studies on the moral and theoretical justifications for the institutions of moral and political theory and their applications to actual institutions. The author cites Murphy's ability to connect these justifications to real situations such as the work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the refusal of then Governor George W. Bush to grant death-row clemency to Karla Faye Tucker. The author also analyzes Murphy's treatment of mercy in the context of criminal justice.

This book review of David Garland’s “Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition,” assesses Garland’s contributions both to the literature about the American death penalty and to the broader debate about the nature and causes of American penal exceptionalism. Garland’s perspective is considered in light of the work of James Whitman, Franklin Zimring, Michael Tonry, Nicola Lacey, and William Stuntz. After situating Garland in the larger conversation, the review goes on to illustrate and deepen Garland account of the contingency of America’s recent death penalty story by imaging three counterfactual (and extremely divergent) American death penalty stories-that-might-have-been.