scholarly journals Can Capital Punishment Survive If Black Lives Matter?

2021 ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
Michael Cholbi ◽  
Alex Madva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Implicit Biases ◽  
Murder Victims ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race

Drawing upon empirical studies of racial discrimination, the Movement for Black Lives platform calls for the abolition of capital punishment. The authors defend the Movement’s claim that the death penalty in the United States is a “racist practice” that “devalues Black lives.” They first sketch the jurisprudential history of race and capital punishment in the United States, wherein courts have occasionally expressed worries about racial injustice but have usually called for reform rather than abolition. They argue that the racial discrimination at issue flows in part from implicit biases concerning race, criminality, and violence, which do not fit comfortably within the picture of racial bias advanced by the courts. The case for abolition rests on Black Americans as a class (not merely those who interact with the criminal justice system as capital defendants or as murder victims) being subject to such bias and thereby not being accorded equal status under the law.

The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Carol S. Steiker ◽  
Jordan M. Steiker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Western Democracies

This review addresses four key issues in the modern (post-1976) era of capital punishment in the United States. First, why has the United States retained the death penalty when all its peer countries (all other developed Western democracies) have abolished it? Second, how should we understand the role of race in shaping the distinctive path of capital punishment in the United States, given our country's history of race-based slavery and slavery's intractable legacy of discrimination? Third, what is the significance of the sudden and profound withering of the practice of capital punishment in the past two decades? And, finally, what would abolition of the death penalty in the United States (should it ever occur) mean for the larger criminal justice system?

scholarly journals A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing

2014 ◽  
Vol 104 (11) ◽  
pp. 3397-3433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Alesina ◽  
Eliana La Ferrara
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
The United States ◽  
Type I ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Trial Courts ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
White Defendants

We collect a new dataset on capital punishment in the United States and we propose a test of racial bias based upon patterns of sentence reversals. We model the courts as minimizing type I and II errors. If trial courts were unbiased, conditional on defendant's race the error rate should be independent of the victim's race. Instead we uncover 3 and 9 percentage points higher reversal rates in direct appeal and habeas corpus cases, respectively, against minority defendants who killed whites. The pattern for white defendants is opposite but not statistically significant. This bias is confined to Southern states. (JEL J15, K41, K42)

Diaspora in the United States: Chinese and Indians Compared

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Skop ◽  
Wei Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Migration Rates ◽  
China And India ◽  
History Of ◽  
Migrant Groups ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn recent years, the migration rates from both China and India to the U.S. have accelerated. Since 2000 more than a third of foreign-born Chinese and 40% of foreign-born Indians have arrived in that country. This paper will document the evolving patterns of immigration from China and India to the U.S. by tracing the history of immigration and racial discrimination, the dramatic transitions that have occurred since the mid-20th century, and the current demographic and socioeconomic profiles of these two migrant groups.

95 Years of Teaching High School Sociology

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael DeCesare
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High School ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teaching Sociology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of

A neglected part of the history of teaching sociology is the history of teaching high school sociology. The American Sociological Association's centennial in 2005 affords sociologists an opportunity to reflect on the teaching of sociology–anywhere and everywhere that it happens. In the spirit of contributing to the history of teaching sociology in the United States, this paper outlines the roughly 95-year history of the teaching of high school sociology. I rely upon published course descriptions written by high school sociology teachers and empirical studies conducted by academic sociologists. They demonstrate that past high school sociology courses have focused primarily on examining social problems and current events, and on promoting citizenship education. This remains the case today. I offer several reasons why the courses have looked as they have over the past 95 years, and conclude with four predictions about the future of teaching high school sociology.

Formative Mappings, Political Trappings

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Fong ◽  
Victoria Hattam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Ethnic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Investments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
History Of Race

Contemporary scholarship on racial and ethnic politics in the United States has broadly followed three main approaches in assessing the history of race and ethnicity in the United States. We therefore map three different ways of seeing the relationship between race and ethnicity contained within Whiteness Studies, scholarship on cultural pluralism and multiculturalism, and scholarship on intersections and Intersectionality. Each locates the history of racial and ethnic difference within a larger political problematic, each attaches a different significance and valence between racial and ethnic categories, and each bears with it the particular political investments constituting its origins. By highlighting the divergent ways racial and ethnic categories are mobilized we underscore the irreducibly political nature of race and ethnicity and their ongoing generative role in American politics.

scholarly journals The Secret History of Race in the United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 112 (6) ◽  
pp. 1473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Sharfstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Secret History

scholarly journals Capital Sentencing: The Effect of Adding Aggravators to Death Penalty Statutes in Pennsylvania

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Schultz Newman ◽  
Eric Rayz ◽  
Scott Eric Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Statistical Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capital Sentencing ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of

The birthplace of the American republic—the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—has historically been at the forefront of the capital punishment legislation in the United States. It was the first colony in the Union to abolish the death penalty for all crimes with the exception of murder. It was the first to set forth a statutory distinction between different degrees of criminal homicide, confining imposition of capital punishment to the most chilling form of this crime—“willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing.” With this storied history in mind, we have undertaken the task of examining the current state of the death penalty in the Commonwealth. Hence, in Part II of this Article, we set forth a detailed history of the capital sentencing scheme in Pennsylvania. Part III undertakes a statistical study of the imposition of the death penalty in the Commonwealth from 1978 until 1997. In Part IV, we conclude by summing up our general observations.

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