Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 
Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a fortnightly series of articles on the role of art in public policymaking. This series invites WPI fellows and project leaders as well as external practitioners to contribute pieces on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.
In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Ian Bremmer illustrates a historic shift in the international system and the world economy—and an unprecedented moment of global uncertainty.
Death Penalty
Je persisterai à la demander [l’abolition de la peine de mort] tant qu’on ne m’aura pas prouvé l’infaillibilité des jugemens humains
Until the infallibility of human judgment shall have been proved to me, I shall persist in demanding the abolition of the death penalty
—Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, 17 August 1830, from Charles Lucas, Recueil des Débats des Assemblées Législatives de la France sur la Question de la Peine de Mort, part 2, at 42 (Paris, 1831)
No system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death.
—report of Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment, April 2002
In reality the death penalty is reserved for people who do not have enough money to defend themselves.
—Paul Simon, former US Senator from Illinois, co-chair of Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment, April 2002
A bold and brave act by the outgoing governor of Illinois, commuting all death sentences in the state:
- Speech by Gov. George Ryan at Northwestern University College of Law, 11 January 2003: “I will not stand for it.”
The US is in bad company:
- Pacific News Service, August 2002: Death penalty nations marked by extremism
- Michael Kroll, Pacific News Service, June 1999: America’s growing isolation on the death penalty and juvenile justice
The argument for abolition:
- American Civil Liberties Union: The Case Against the Death Penalty
- Jack Greenberg, Harvard Law Review: Against the American System of Capital Punishment
- Lafayette on the death penalty (in the original French)
What the Bible says:
- crimes punishable by death
- methods of execution
- standard of evidence
- words of Jesus of Nazareth
The death penalty is way more expensive than the alternatives:
- Death Penalty Information Center: Fact Sheet on the Death Penalty in the United States
World atlas of the death penalty and rates of incarceration:
- death penalty worldwide: abolitionist and retentionist countries (maps | list)
- death penalty in USA: (maps | tables)
- rates of incarceration worldwide — the USA is #1 :(maps | tables)
International human rights treaties:
- 2nd Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: ratifications (maps | tables)
- Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty A-53: ratifications (maps | tables)
Recommended reading:
- Mark Costanzo, Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997)
Global Democracy and Human Rights Home
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