Though much of this book is devoted to impugning all the standard rationales for capital punishment, the chief purpose of the volume is to advance an alternative justification for such punishment in a very limited range of cases. Pursuing both a project of critical debunking and a project of partial vindication, the book presents a rationale for the death penalty that is free-standing rather than an aspect or offshoot of a general theory of punishment. Its purgative rationale has not heretofore been propounded in any contemporary philosophical and practical debates over the death penalty. Whil ... More

Though much of this book is devoted to impugning all the standard rationales for capital punishment, the chief purpose of the volume is to advance an alternative justification for such punishment in a very limited range of cases. Pursuing both a project of critical debunking and a project of partial vindication, the book presents a rationale for the death penalty that is free-standing rather than an aspect or offshoot of a general theory of punishment. Its purgative rationale has not heretofore been propounded in any contemporary philosophical and practical debates over the death penalty. While the volume contributes to many areas of normative ethics, it contributes above all to the philosophy of criminal law with a fresh rationale for the use of the death penalty and with probing assessments of all the major theories of punishment that have been broached by jurists and philosophers for centuries.