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On the Liberating Virtues of Irrelevance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Franklin E. Zimring
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Extract

The analyses of the death penalty reported in these pages, while diverse in both subject and method, are part of a distinctive post–McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) generation of studies in which the social science literature on capital punishment has begun to stand separate from ever present constitutional litigation on death penalty issues. This independence of scholarship from litigation has come as a consequence of rejection: A majority on the U.S. Supreme Court has forcefully rebuffed the attempts of social scientists to influence the constitutional law of capital punishment.

Type
Symposium: Research on the Death Penalty
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 1993 , pp. 9 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan and Michael Laurence of the American Civil Liberties Union were patient readers of this Introduction.

References

References

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Cases Cited

Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976).Google Scholar
Lockhart v. McCree, 476 U.S. 162 (1988).Google Scholar
McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).Google Scholar
Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510 (1968).Google Scholar