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Berman Responds to My Comments

By Corey Rayburnyung

In response to my comments about his article (co-authored with Bibas), Berman had this to say:In my view, connecting the emotion/rational divide to the retribution/deterrence divide is insightful, but incomplete.  I personally think there is and should be some rationality in retribution and also that there is and must be some emotion in deterrence. Moreover, to go a bit meta, I often notice a lot of emotion in the way in which supposedly "rational" scholars examine and debate deterrence in the context of the death penalty.  In the Kennedy context, I am yet to see a truly sober and meticulous analysis of whether capital child rape could be reasonably expected to serve utilitarian interests.  Rather, in many critiques of capital child rape, we get what seem to me to be emotion-driven and highly-questionable assertions that there will be negative consequences from allowing child rape to be a death-eligible crime...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Crimes on June 04, 2008 (boomark / email).