Slavery and the Death Penalty

A Study in Abolition

Bharat Malkani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781317054429
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

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, but this book considers the lesser-explored relationship between the two practices' respective abolitionist movements. The book explains how the historical and conceptual links between slavery and capital punishment have both helped and hindered efforts to end capital punishment. The comparative study also sheds light on the nature of such efforts, and offers lessons for how death penalty abolitionism should proceed in future. Using the history of slavery and abolition, it is argued that anti-death penalty efforts should be premised on the ideologies of the radical slavery abolitionists.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The death penalty in the era of slavery
• 2. Capital punishment and the legacy of slavery, 1865–1976
• 3. The legacy of slavery in capital punishment since 1976
• 4. Abolitionism defined
• 5. Radical abolitionist constitutionalism
• 6. The experiential abolitionist
• 7. Abolitionism and “alternatives”
• 8. Non-complicity and abolitionism: from fugitive slaves to lethal injections
• 9. A peculiar abolition
• Index