Capital Punishment
Strategies for Abolition

A comparative exploration of issues around the use or abolition of the death penalty.

Peter Hodgkinson (Edited by), William A. Schabas (Edited by)

9780521115599, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 July 2009

392 pages, 10 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.57 kg

What are the critical factors that determine whether a country replaces, retains or restores the death penalty? Why do some countries maintain the death penalty in theory but in reality rarely invoke it? By asking these questions, the editors hope to isolate the core issues that influence the formulation of legislation so that they can be incorporated into strategies for advising governments considering changes to their policy on capital punishment. They also seek to redress the imbalance in research, which tends to focus almost exclusively on the experience of the USA, by covering a range of countries such as South Korea, Lithuania, Japan and the British Caribbean Commonwealth. This valuable contribution to the debates around capital punishment contains contributions from leading academics, campaigners and legal practitioners and will be an important resource for students, academics, NGOs, policy makers, lawyers and jurists.

List of figures
List of tables
Notes on the contributors
1. Capital punishment: improve it or remove it? Peter Hodgkinson
2. International law and the death penalty: reflecting or promoting change? William A. Schabas
3. Doctors and the death penalty: ethics and a cruel punishment Robert Ferris and James Welsh
4. Replacing the death penalty: the vexed issue of alternative sanctions Andrew Coyle
5. Religion and the death penalty in the United States: past and present James J. Megivern
6. On botched executions Marian J. Borg and Michael L. Radelet
7. Death as a penalty in the Shari'? M. Cherif Bassiouni
8. Abolishing the death penalty in the United States: an analysis of institutional obstacles and future prospects Hugo Adam Bedau
9. Capital punishment in the United State: moratorium efforts and other key developments Ronald J. Tabak
10. The experiences of Lithuania's journey to abolition Alexsandras Dobryninas
11. The death penalty in South Korea and Japan: 'Asian values' and the debate about capital punishment? Byung-Sun Cho
12. Georgia, former republic of the USSR: managing abolition Eric Svanidze
13. Capital punishment in the Commonwealth Caribbean: colonial inheritance, colonial remedy? Julian B. Knowles
14. Public opinion and the death penalty William A. Schabas
15. Capital punishment: meeting the needs of the families of the homicide victim and the condemned Peter Hodgkinson
Index.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Politics & government [JP], Crime & criminology [JKV], Society & social sciences [J]