WEBINAR: Souveraineté et peine de mort: du modèle romain antique aux réalités contemporaines - 22.01.2021 - Faculté de Droit, Université de Toulon

 

(Source: Storia del diritto medievale e moderno)

BOOK: Steven ANDERSON, A History of Capital Punishment in the Australian Colonies, 1788 to 1900 (Cham: Springer, 2020). ISBN 978-3-030-53766-1, 83.19 EUR

 

(Source: Springer)

Springer has published a new book on the history of capital punishment in the Australian Colonies.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers, and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from public to private executions and the push to abolish the death penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument that shows how the ‘lesson’ of the gallows was to be safeguarded, refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared punishment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia. His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in the Australian colonies by situating developments in these jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Thinking About Punishment Over Time

Australia’s Hanging Years

The Ideal and Reality of Execution Procedure

The Criminal at the Gallows

The Scaffold Crowd

The End of Public Executions

Race and the Reprisal of Public Hangings

The Push to Abolish Capital Punishment

Conclusion: Death of a Spectacle

 

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BOOK: Carolyn STRANGE, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). ISBN 9781487508371, 60.00 USD

 

(Source: University of Toronto Press)

The University of Toronto Press has published a new book on the history of the death penalty and sex murder in Canada.

ABOUT THE BOOK

From Confederation to the partial abolition of the death penalty a century later, defendants convicted of sexually motivated killings and sexually violent homicides in Canada were more likely than any other condemned criminals to be executed for their crimes. Despite the emergence of psychiatric expertise in criminal trials, moral disgust and anger proved more potent in courtrooms, the public mind, and the hearts of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for determining the outcome of capital cases.

 

Wherever death has been set as the ultimate criminal penalty, the poor, minority groups, and stigmatized peoples have been more likely to be accused, convicted, and executed. Although the vast majority of convicted sex killers were white, Canada’s racist notions of "the Indian mind" meant that Indigenous defendants faced the presumption of guilt. Black defendants were also subjected to discriminatory treatment, including near lynchings. In debates about capital punishment, abolitionists expressed concern that prejudices and poverty created the prospect of wrongful convictions.

 

Unique in the ways it reveals the emotional drivers of capital punishment in delivering inequitable outcomes, The Death Penalty and Sex Murder in Canadian History provides a thorough overview of sex murder and the death penalty in Canada. It serves as an essential history and a richly documented cautionary tale for the present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolyn Strange is a professor in the School of History at the Australian National University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

 

Introduction

 

1. The Politics of the Death Penalty and the Problem of Sex Murder

2. Sex Fiends and the Death Penalty at the Turn of Canada’s Century

3. Contesting Convictions and Questioning Culpability: Sex Murder between the Wars

4. Sexual Psychopathy and Penal Severity in the Post-War Era

5. Sexual Psychopathy, Insanity, and the Death Penalty under Scrutiny in the 1950s

6. Sex Murder in the Sixties and the Demise of the Death Penalty

 

Epilogue: The Problem of Sex Murder in the Shadow of Abolition

 

Note on Sources and Methods

 

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BOOK: Flocel SABATÉ, The Death Penalty in Late-Medieval Catalonia : Evidence and Significations (London: Routledge, 2019). ISBN 9780367188634, £130.00

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge is publishing a book on the death penalty in late-medieval Catalonia.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The death penalty was unusual in medieval Europe until the twelfth century. From that moment on, it became a key instrument of rule in European society, and we can study it in the case of Catalonia through its rich and varied unpublished documentation. The death penalty was justified by Roman Law; accepted by Theology and Philosophy for the Common Good; and used by rulers as an instrument for social intimidation. The application of the death penalty followed a regular trial, and the status of the individual dictated the method of execution, reserving the fire for the worst crimes, as the Inquisition applied against the so-called heretics. The executions were public, and the authorities and the people shared the common goal of restoring the will of God which had been broken by the executed person. The death penalty took an important place in the core of the medieval mind: people included executions in the jokes and popular narratives while the gallows filled the landscape fitting the jurisdictional limits and, also, showing rotten corpses to assert that the best way to rule and order the society is by terror.

This book utilises previously unpublished archival sources to present a unique study on the death penalty in late Medieval Europe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Flocel Sabaté is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Lleida, Spain and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina. He is director of the journal Imago Temporis Medium Aevum and president of the Association of the Historians of the Crown of Aragon. He has served as a guest professor in universities and research centres as Concepción, ENS (Lyon), JSPS (Tokyo), Lisboa, Mexico, Paris-1, Poitiers, and Yale.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

List of abbreviations

Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter Two: Precedent times: The Early-Medieval Justice Before Major Crimes

Chapter Three: Sovereignty and merum imperium

Chapter Four: The Symbology of the Gallows: Jurisdiction and Terror

Chapter Five: The Death Penalty in the ‘plenitudo potestatis’

Chapter Six: The Death Penalty in the Non-Royal Jurisdictions

Chapter Seven: The Death Penalty in the Legislation and Municipal Capitality

Chapter Eight: The Death Penalty in Ordinary Justice

Chapter Nine: The Death Sentences

Chapter Ten: The Application of the Death Penalty: The Ceremony of Execution

Chapter Eleven: The Application of the Death Penalty: The Display of the Body

Chapter Twelve: The Application of the Death Penalty: Punishment by Fire

Chapter Thirteen: More Fire: The Inquisition and the Death Penalty

Chapter Fourteen: The Death Penalty and Otherness: Jews and Muslims Before the Death Penalty

Chapter Fifteen: The Death Penalty in the Mind

Chapter Sixteen: The Death Penalty in the Paths to Consolidate Power and Social Cohesion

Chapter Seventeen: The Death Penalty at the End of the Middle Ages in the Tense Catalonia

Chapter Eighteen: Conclusions

Appendix

Index

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BOOK: Claude GAUVARD, Condamner à mort au Moyen Âge (Paris: PUF, 2018), 368 p. ISBN 9782130540380, € 24

Book abstract:

« Digne de mourir, comme inutile au monde » : c’est en ces termes que les archives ont conservé la trace de la condam­nation à mort d’un valet déclaré coupable de vol, à Paris, en 1391. Cette sentence glacée conforte-t-elle la vision d’un Moyen Âge sanguinaire où la peine capitale aurait été fréquente ? Révèle-t-elle la puissance d’un roi qui affirme ainsi sa domination sur ses sujets, ou la dérive de l’Église qui ne considère plus que, selon l’enseignement de saint Augustin, le criminel peut être racheté ? Condamner à mort au Moyen Âge n’est pas un acte plus anodin qu’aujourd’hui, et si, en ces siècles de construction de la justice, la condamnation est un outil d’affirmation du pouvoir royal, ce n’est pas par sa nature coercitive ou arbitraire, mais par l’encadrement des juges et la pratique de la grâce. C’est là l’autre pan d’un Moyen Âge rénové que Claude Gauvard révèle depuis plusieurs décennies, avec cette volonté d’approcher au plus près, par un examen minutieux et clairvoyant de sources inédites, la cohérence d’une société médiévale qui nous apparaît à la fois étrangère et fondatrice.

On the author:

Professeur émérite d’histoire du Moyen Âge à l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, membre senior honoraire de l’Institut universitaire de France, Claude Gauvard est spécialiste de l’histoire de la justice et de la criminalité, et plus généralement d’histoire politique et sociale des XIIIe-XVe siècle. Aux Puf, elle est notamment l’auteure de La France au Moyen Âge, du Ve au XVe siècle, a dirigé le recueil Une histoire de France, et codirige la Revue historique ainsi que la collection « Le Noeud gordien ».

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BOOK: Bharat MALKANI, Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition. (London: Routledge, 2018). ISBN 9781472452740, £92.00

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge has just published a book on the relationship between the abolitionist movement for slavery and the death penalty.

ABOUT THE BOOK

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Bharat Malkani researches and teaches in the field of capital punishment, and human rights and criminal justice more broadly. He is a member of the International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and prior to joining academia he helped co-ordinate efforts to abolish the death penalty for persons under the age of 18 in America.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: The death penalty in the era of slavery

Chapter 2: Capital punishment and the legacy of slavery: 1865–1976

Chapter 3: The legacy of slavery in capital punishment since 1976

Chapter 4: Abolitionism defined

Chapter 5: Radical abolitionist constitutionalism

Chapter 6: The experiential abolitionist

Chapter 7: Abolitionism and "alternatives"

Chapter 8: Non-complicity and abolitionism: from fugitive slaves to lethal injections

Chapter 9: A peculiar abolition

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