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Repudiating Death, William W. Berry Iii

William W Berry III

In recent years, three Supreme Court justices, Powell, Blackmun, and Stevens, have all called for the abolition of the death penalty, repudiating their prior approval of the use of capital punishment. This article conceptualizes these reversals not as normative shifts on the morality of capital punishment, but instead as shifts in the justices' views concerning their own need to exercise judicial restraint towards the states with respect to the death penalty. Two separate decisions comprise their abandonment of judicial restraint. First, Powell, Blackmun, and Stevens all acquiesce to the decision of the Court to use the Eighth Amendment to regulate …