Law Commons^™

Death Sentences In The Great Qing, 1744-1840: Critical Note On Civilization In Comparison With England And Wales, Moulin Xiong, Ren Liu

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

Over the last centuries, the view on the death penalty in Qing China has been distorted, presenting a picture of abusive brutality and excessive cruelty, and thus was used as the critical pretext to establish immune extraterritorial jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the existing comments are more literary embellishments without empirical evidence, and few comparative and historical perspectives have been utilized to clarify the truth. In this study, we mined annual death sentence numerical data for the period 1744 to 1840 from official archives and literatures, deciphering the capital crimes in detail and ascertaining the longitudinal trend with population statistics. To reassess the …

A Comparative Study Of The Jewish And The United States Constitutional Law Of Capital Punishment, Steven Davidoff

Steven Davidoff Solomon

The Jewish view on the death penalty is that it should exist but it should never be used .... [lI]t is Governor Pataki's job to ensure :order. But he must remember that as a leader he must exhibit attributes of both the father and the mother. Governor Pataki is a nice man. But if he acts on the death penalty, he will be the leader of a bloody government

Reforming The Death Penalty In Egypt: An Islamic Law Perspective, Gaber Mohamed

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

The main goal of this thesis is to reform the imposition of the death penalty in the Egyptian legal system through the tools and theories of Islamic law. This subject will be discussed in three main chapters: The first chapter will be a survey of the current application of the death penalty in the Egyptian legal system, including the death penalty’s history, laws, courts, appeals, legal procedures, and general comments on the current application of the penalty. The second chapter will be about the death penalty in Islamic law – including the sources of Islamic law, the crimes that merit …

Rubbing The Rabbit's Foot: Gallows Superstitions And Public Healthcare In England During The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Superstitions possess an ancient pedigree. With the passage of time thematic superstitions developed; for example, some solely addressed the public’s health care needs. In fact, as far back as the fifth century many English subjects believed magical spells and jewels had curative properties. Law was another context that generated a body of superstitions. Capital punishment was one area that generated many superstitions. In fact, so many that a specific category was established: gallows superstitions. With hanging as the primary method of execution in England for centuries, this group of superstitions became a relatively large one. By merging the health care …

Retention And Reform In Japanese Capital Punishment, David T. Johnson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article focuses on the failure of abolition and of death penalty reform in Japan in order to illustrate contingencies in the trajectory of capital punishment in the modern world. Part I describes three facts about postwar Japan that help explain why it retains capital punishment today: a missed opportunity for abolition during the American occupation of the country after World War II; the long-term rule of a conservative political party; and economic and geopolitical power that has enabled the country to resist the influence of international norms. Part II describes a few ways in which Japanese capital punishment has …

Public Opinion And The Abolition Or Retention Of The Death Penalty Why Is The United States Different?, Sara Sun Beale

Faculty Scholarship

What explains the difference between the United States and the many other countries that have abolished capital punishment? Because the United States and many other nations that have abolished the death penalty are democracies, there seems to be an obvious answer: abolition or retention reflects the preferences of the electorate. According to this view, the U.S. electorate is simply more punitive, and the question becomes explaining the difference in national attitudes. There is some truth to this explanation. As I have argued elsewhere, the U.S. public generally does favor punitive criminal justice policies. But that cannot be the whole story. …

An Anachronism Too Discordant To Be Suffered: A Comparative Study Of Parliamentary And Presidential Approaches To Regulation Of The Death Penalty, Derek R. Verhagen

Derek R VerHagen

It is well-documented that the United States remains the only western democracy to retain the death penalty and finds itself ranked among the world's leading human rights violators in executions per year. However, prior to the Gregg v. Georgia decision in 1976, ending America's first and only moratorium on capital punishment, the U.S. was well in line with the rest of the civilized world in its approach to the death penalty. This Note argues that America's return to the death penalty is based primarily on the differences between classic parliamentary approaches to regulation and that of the American presidential system. …

Courts Of Appeal And Colonialism In The British Caribbean: A Case For The Caribbean Court Of Justice, Ezekiel Rediker

Michigan Journal of International Law

In recent years, a public debate on law and the colonial legacy has engaged people of all walks of life in the English Speaking Caribbean (ESC), from judges and politicians to young people in the streets. Throughout the ESC, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC)—based in London and composed of British jurists—has been the highest court of appeal since the colonial era. In the past decade, however, Caribbean governments have sought greater control over their legal systems. In 2005, they created the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to supplant the British Privy Council as the Supreme Court for …

Domestic Violence And State Intervention In The American West And Australia, 1860-1930, Carolyn B. Ramsey

Publications

This Article calls into question stereotypical assumptions about the presumed lack of state intervention in the family and the patriarchal violence of Anglo-American frontier societies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By analyzing previously unexamined cases of domestic assault and homicide in the American West and Australia, Professor Ramsey reveals a sustained (but largely ineffectual) effort to civilize men by punishing violence against women. Husbands in both the American West and Australia were routinely arrested or summoned to court for beating their wives in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Judges, police officers, journalists, and others expressed dismay …

Why Did China Reform Its Death Penalty?, Kandis Scott

Faculty Publications

China recently reformed its death penalty laws, and as a result the government has executed fewer prisoners. The author explores possible reasons and policy concerns behind China's legal reform. These influences include international forces and domestic factors, such as the media, changed circumstances, compassion, and politics. Although hardly transparent, the underlying motivations for the revisions suggest that eventually China may abolish capital punishment, perhaps even before the United States does so.

Executions, Deterrence And Homicide: A Tale Of Two Cities, Franklin Zimring, Jeffrey Fagan, David T. Johnson

Faculty Scholarship

We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to 1 per million per year until an explosive twentyfold increase in 1994-95 and 1996-97 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95%. Hong Kong, by contrast,has no executions all during the last generation and abolished capital punishment in 1993. Homicide levels and trends are remarkably similar in these two cities over the 35 years after 1973, with neither the surge in Singapore …

United States V. Burns: Canada's Extraterritorial Extension Of Canadian Law And Creation Of A Canadian "Safe Haven" In Capital Extradition Cases, Andrea Cortland

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Christ, Christians & Capital Punishment, Mark Osler

ExpressO

Last year, I came to a startling conclusion: That the debate over the death penalty in the United States is largely among Christians, but has ignored the capital sentencing which is at the center of that faith. The result of this epiphany is Christ, Christians & Capital Punishment.

In this article, I argue that the story of Christ parallels modern capital practice in many respects: Christ was turned in by a paid informant (Judas), arrested in a strategic manner, given an arraignment and stood mute, was tried, convicted and sentenced, appealed to two separate sovereigns, and finally was denied a …

Saving Constitutional Rights From Judicial Scrutiny: The Savings Clause In The Law Of The Commonwealth Caribbean, Margaret A. Burham

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

The European Tendency Toward Non-Extradition To The United States In Capital Cases: Trends, Assurances, And Breaches Of Duty, Robert Gregg

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Death Penalty In The United States: Following The European Lead, Nora V. Demleitner

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Capital Punishment And Religious Arguments: An Intermediate Approach, Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

Determining the place and use of capital punishment in the American legal system is a challenging affair and one that is closely associated with and determined by religion's role in American legal decision-making. Both capital punishment and religion are controversial issues, and tend to challenge legal scholars and practitioners about whether they should function together or alone as valid parts of the legal system in the United States. Professor Levine argues that religious arguments should be employed to interpret and explain American legal thought when the need or proper situation arises. He uses capital punishment as an example of how …

Living With The Death Penalty, Samuel R. Gross

Articles

The debate over the death penalty in the United States - such as it is - is framed in terms of criminal justice policy. The issues are the same ones we consider when the question is the length of prison sentence for a drug crime: Does the defendant deserve the penalty? Is it cost effective by comparison to other available sanctions? Will it deter others from committing the crimes for which he was convicted? Can we impose this punishment fairly? Can we make sure that innocent people are not condemned?

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

A Comparative Study Of The Jewish And The United States Constitutional Law Of Capital Punishment, Steven Davidoff

ILSA Journal of International & Comparative Law

The Jewish view on the death penalty is that it should exist but it should never be used .... [lI]t is Governor Pataki's job to ensure :order. But he must remember that as a leader he must exhibit attributes of both the father and the mother. Governor Pataki is a nice man. But if he acts on the death penalty, he will be the leader of a bloody government

Toward The Abolition Of The Death Penalty, Shigemitsu Dando

Indiana Law Journal

This Article was delivered by Justice Dando as the Jerome Hall Lecture at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington on April 14, 1996.

Mature Adjudication: Interpretive Choice In Recent Death Penalty Cases, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Capital punishment presents a "hard" case for adjudication. It provokes sharp conflict between competing constitutional interpretations and invariably raises questions of judicial bias. This is particularly true in the new Republic of South Africa, where the framers of the interim constitution deliberately were silent regarding the legality of the death penalty. The tension is of equivalent force in the United States, where recent expressions of core constitutional rights have raised potentially irreconcilable conflicts in the application of capital punishment.

Two recent death penalty decisions – the South African Constitutional Court opinions in State v. Makwanyane and the United States Supreme …

Note, The Death Penalty In Late Imperial, Modern, And Post-Tiananmen China, Alan W. Lepp

Michigan Journal of International Law

This paper seeks to explore the crucial determinants that shape the Chinese legal system's use of the death penalty. Why have the Chinese relied so heavily on execution as a form of sentencing? What factors and conditions account for the major changes in the frequency of China's use of the death penalty? What indigenous traditions are reflected in China's implementation of the death penalty? In order to inquire into the role and function of the legal system in affecting the severity of criminal punishment in China, this study will focus on only those death sentences carried out by the state …

Societal Concepts Of Criminal Liability For Homicide In Medieval England, Thomas A. Green

Articles

THE early history of English criminal law lies hidden behind the laconic formulas of the rolls and law books. The rules of the law, as expounded by the judges, have been the subject of many studies; but their practical application in the courts, where the jury of the community was the final and unbridled arbiter, remains a mystery: in short, we know little of the social mores regarding crime and crimi- nals. This study represents an attempt to delineate one major aspect of these societal attitudes. Its thesis is that from late Anglo-Saxon times to the end of the middle …

The Courts Of Judea, Jerome C. Knowlton

Articles

The study of Jewish jurisprudence has become interesting during the past ten years through the efforts of some painstaking scholars, who have not been burdened with any particular dogma, but have been actuated by a true Christian spirit. They have been close students of those portions of the Talmud which throw light on the jurisprudence of the Jews.