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The Underfunded Death Penalty: Mercy As Discrimination In A Rights Based System Of Justice, Malla Pollack

Malla Pollack

This paper suggests that the relationship between justice and mercy is dependent on the system in which they are operating. [In a rights-based system, one where discrimination is forbidden, mercy is acceptable only when it is a subset of justice. Arbitrary mercy treating like cases in unlike fashion is moral only if individuals have no "right" to equal treatment, i.e., in a duty-based system. This paper begins with moral theory: part I briefly presents other recent philosophical treatments of mercy; part II states a philosophical "Thesis," illustrates it with the leading case of Queen v. Dudley, and explains why Dudley …