In this Book
- Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: Northeastern University Press
summary
The conventional wisdom is that the founders were avid death penalty supporters. In this fascinating and insightful examination of America's Eighth Amendment, law professor John D. Bessler explodes this myth and shows the founders' conflicting and ambivalent views on capital punishment. Cruel and Unusual takes the reader back in time to show how the indiscriminate use of executions gave way to a more enlightened approach--one that has been evolving ever since. While shedding important new light on the U.S. Constitution's "cruel and unusual punishments" clause, Bessler explores the influence of Cesare Beccaria's essay, On Crimes and Punishments, on the Founders' views, and the transformative properties of the Fourteenth Amendment, which made the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. After critiquing the U.S. Supreme Court's existing case law, this essential volume argues that America's death penalty--a vestige of a bygone era in which ear cropping and other gruesome corporal punishments were thought acceptable--should be declared unconstitutional.
Table of Contents
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- acknowledgments
- pp. 12-15
- Introduction
- pp. 18-28
- Chapter One In Cold Blood
- pp. 29-47
- Chapter Three The Abolitionists
- pp. 83-113
- Chapter Four America’s Founding Fathers
- pp. 114-178
- Chapter Five The Eighth Amendment
- pp. 179-238
- Chapter Six Capital Punishment in America
- pp. 239-281
- Chapter Seven The Road to Abolition
- pp. 282-355
- Conclusion
- pp. 356-365
- bibliography
- pp. 422-433
Additional Information
ISBN
9781555537173
Related ISBN(s)
9781555537166
MARC Record
OCLC
797817612
Pages
464
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No