Thursday, December 17, 2015

"The Orphan in Political Life"

"But Americans are reluctant to relinquish national sovereignty under international agreements, he says, and 'don't use the language of human rights to analyze our own politics.' Instead, they tend to think about the death penalty in civil-rights or constitutional terms. National decision-making about this matter, Temkin explains, 'has been handed over, collectively, to the Supreme Court.' Opponents have attacked capital punishment at its weakest legal points, while supporting state-by-state abolition. Beyond a brief moratorium on executions in the 1970s, the lasting result has been regulation and restriction. In a series of decisions between 2002 and 2008, the Court ruled that juvenile offenders, people with certain intellectual disabilities, and those convicted of non-murder offenses could not be put to death. These developments have convinced some observers that the death penalty itself will soon be declared unconstitutional, but Temkin remains skeptical. 'My argument, based on the history, is that this is not a track that leads to the sort of permanent abolition we see in other parts of the world.'"

Sophia Nguyen in Harvard Magazine talks with Moshik Temkin about the death penalty.

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