Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Capital Defense Weekly

Criminal Law

: Capital Defense Weekly

Closure: new scholarship

By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

Susan Andes has just released fascinating new scholarship on murder and closure over at SSRN. Prof. Andes’ article is aptly entitled Victims, ‘Closure’, and the Sociology of Emotion. A first read suggests that the piece adds substantial strength to the argument that proved so powerful in New Jersey, the death penalty does nothing to achieve closure for victims. From that article: The theme of closure has reframed the entire death penalty debate. For many years, support for the death penalty was premised on its deterrent function. More recently, the weight of empirical evidence has rendered the deterrence rationale increasingly tenuous. Retribution, the major alternative rationale, has always been a harder sell. Retribution at one time sounded too close to revenge, and made people uncomfortable...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on March 24, 2008 (boomark / email).