Debate has long been waged over the morality of capital punishment, with standard arguments in its favor, grounded in the values of retribution or deterrence, being marshalled against familiar arguments against the practice. In The Ethics of Capital Punishment, Matthew Kramer takes a fresh look at the philosophical arguments on which the system of state execution should stand or fall, and develops a novel, controversial argument in its justification.
The book pursues both a project of critical debunking of the familiar rationales for capital punishment and a project of partial...