Full Description
What is the meaning of punishment today? Where is the limit that separates it from the cruel and unusual? In legal discourse, the distinction between punishment and vengeance—punishment being the measured use of legally sanctioned violence and vengeance being a use of violence that has no measure—is expressed by the idea of "cruel and unusual punishment." This phrase was originally contained in the English Bill of Rights (1689). But it (and versions of it) has since found its way into numerous constitutions and declarations, including Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the Amendment to the US Constitution. Clearly, in order for the use of violence to be legitimate, it must be subject to limitation. The difficulty is that the determination of this limit should be objective, but it is not, and its application in punitive practice is constituted by a host of extra-legal factors and social and political structures. It is this essential contestability of the limit which distinguishes punishment from violence that this book addresses. And, including contributions from a range of internationally renowned scholars, it offers a plurality of original and important responses to the contemporary question of the relationship between punishment and the limits of law.
Contents
"It's Not Just a Good Idea, It's the Law": Rationality, Force, and Changing Minds
Mark Kingwell
Cruel and thus not Unusual: Jacques Derrida's Seminar on the Death Penalty
Michael Naas
The Violent Rhetoric of Accusation: Cicero and the Marcus Ameleus Scaurus Case
G. Pavlich
The Colonialism of Incarceration
Robert Nichols
"Ran away from her Master...a Negroe Girl named Thursday": Examining Evidence of Punishment, Isolation, and Trauma in Nova Scotia and Quebec Fugitive Slave Advertisements
Charmaine Nelson
The Work of Death: Massacre and Retribution in Southampton County, Virginia, August 1831
Christopher Tomlins
Civilising Missions and Humanitarian Interventions: into the Laws and Territories of First Nations
Irene Watson
The Rhetoric of Abolition: Continuity and Change in the Struggle Against America's Death Penalty, 1900-2010
Austin Sarat, Robert Kermes, Adelyn Curran, Margaret Kiley, Keshav Pant
"Too wicked to die": The enduring legacy of humane reforms to solitary confinement
Kelly Struthers Munford, Kelly Hannah-Moffat, and Alex Hunter
Nonviolent communion versus medieval ships of fools: Engaged-citizenry alternatives to Europe's war on refugeesPablo Ouziel
