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Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

More thoughtful thoughts on emotions and the death penalty

By Douglas A. Berman

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Professor Susan Bandes has this new piece up at SSRN, titled "Repellent Crimes and Rational Deliberation: Emotion and the Death Penalty." As regular readers know, this is a topic that I find very interesting, and I also find Susan's insights to be thoughtful and interesting (and we often agree on premises and disagree on where those premises take up). Here is the abstract for this new piece: It is often assumed that the anger, outrage and other strong emotions provoked by repellent crimes interfere with rational deliberation. There is some truth to the notion that heinous murders and other shocking crimes place an enormous strain on the criminal justice system, and may exert a destructive influence on institutional process. Nevertheless, the argument that strong emotion interferes with rational deliberation begs the question: what is rational deliberation? This article argues for an understanding of rational deliberation that recognizes its pervasive emotional content...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 19, 2008 (boomark / email).