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Death Penalty in America,
Legal Studies 485, Spring 2003 |
04-29-03, Class discussion questions
From Bedau, chapter 6.
Look through tables 6-1 through 6-5.
- How would you characterize the countries listed in tables 6-1 – 6-3? Do they have any common characteristics?
- How would you characterize the countries listed in table 6-4? Do they have any common characteristics?
- Is there anything that surprises you from looking at these lists? Anything you would not have predicted?
- In his dissent in Atkins v. Virginia, Justice Scalia states (and quotes himself from Thompson):
But the prize for the Court’s Most Feeble Effort to fabricate “national consensus” must go to its appeal (deservedly relegated to a footnote) to the views of assorted professional and religious organizations, members of the so-called “world community,” and respondents to opinion polls. . . Equally irrelevant are the practices of the “world community,” whose notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people. ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution for the United States of America that we are expounding . . . Where there is not first a settled consensus among our own people, the views of other nations, however enlightened the Justice of this Court may think them to be, cannot be imposed upon Americans through the Constitution.’ Thompson (SCALIA, dissenting).
Do you agree or disagree with Justice Scalia? If you disagree, what argument would you make to him? If you agree, do you think there is ever any reason to pay attention to international law and world opinion?