It has long been acknowledged that the death penalty in the United States of America has been shaped by the country's history of slavery and racial violence, bu

The first known abolitionist critique of the death penalty—here for the first time in English In 1764, a Milanese aristocrat named Cesare Beccaria created a s

Before constitutional regulation -- The Supreme Court steps in -- The invisibility of race in the constitutional revolution -- Between the Supreme Court and the

For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Agains

The U.S. death penalty is a peculiar institution, and a uniquely American one. Despite its comprehensive abolition elsewhere in the Western world, capital punis