Overview

The specter of procedural injustice motivates many popular and scholarly objections to capital punishment. So-called proceduralist arguments against the death penalty are attractive to death penalty abolitionists because they sidestep the controversies that bedevil moral critiques of execution. Proceduralists do not shoulder the burden of demonstrating that heinous murderers deserve a punishment less than death. However, proceduralist arguments often pay insufficient attention to the importance of punishment; many imply the highly contentious claim that no type of criminal sanction is legitimate.In Against Capital Punishment, Benjamin S. Yost revitalizes the core of proceduralism both by examining the connection between procedural injustice and the impermissibility of capital punishment and by offering a comprehensive argument of his own which confronts proceduralism's most significant shortcomings. Yost is the first author to develop and defend the irrevocability argument against capital punishment, demonstrating that the irremediability of execution renders capital punishment impermissible. His contention is not that the act of execution is immoral, but rather that the possibility of irrevocable mistakes precludes the just administration of the death penalty. Shoring up proceduralist arguments for the abolition of the death penalty, Against Capital Punishment carries with it implications not only for the continued use of the death penalty in the criminal justice system, but also for the structure and integrity of the system as a whole.

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9780197619018

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Reviews

Yost...has written a brilliant analysis of philosophical arguments for and against the death penalty. Surveying hundreds of scholarly articles and works about capital punishment, the author carefully documents the inadequacies of pro-death penalty reasoning used by philosophers from Immanuel Kant to the present. Yost covers political theories, philosophical arguments, and legal justifications, surveying issues such as deterrence, irrevocability, cost/benefit balance, inadequacy of attorneys, and the inherent fallibility of the American criminal justice system. Most important, he identifies a serious paradigm shift toward abolition of the death penalty...This is a seminal, comprehensive treatment of the capital punishment...Essential. * CHOICE * This book is a gem, and it's worth thinking through Yost's arguments even if one ends up not entirely persuaded. Yost's first chapter is a model of what every introduction to a philosophy book should look like: he motivates his position, lays out his argument, and anticipates objections...Yost develops the irrevocability argument against the death penalty with more care and sophistication than anyone else in the literature that I'm aware of. In light of how long and storied philosophical debates over the death penalty are, this is no small feat. Yost leaves those who advocate for the death penalty with much less ground to stand on. * Criminal Justice Ethics * Benjamin S. Yost has written a meticulously researched and tightly argued treatment of the morality of execution...Yost's book is the most powerful treatment of the procedural argument against execution in the scholarly literature. Its intricate arguments richly repay close study. In light of the injustice of capital punishment, we can only hope that Yost's arguments will serve as potent intellectual ammunition for the righteous citizens fighting tirelessly for abolition. I recommend the book wholeheartedly. * Notre Dame Philosphical Reviews * Philosophically, this book is to date the most sophisticated presentation of the proceduralist case for abolishing capital punishment. Opponents of the death penalty will be able to draw with profit upon Benjamin Yost's nuanced arguments, and supporters of the death penalty will need to come to grips with those arguments in order to counter them. * Matthew H. Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy, Cambridge University * The death penalty is the most severe punishment available for those countries that still retain it. Debates about whether it can be justified have run for as long as there has been capital punishment in any society * where each side largely digs in against the other. Benjamin Yost's defence of procedural abolitionism opens a new, convincing front as to why all of us, including retributivists, should not support death as a punishment. * Appealing to the inherent human fallibility in the administration of the death penalty, Yost's Against Capital Punishment is a careful (and novel) attempt to show that capital punishment should be abolished. Legitimate legal systems correct and remedy their errors, but this commitment, Yost argues, is incompatible with punishing even the worst criminals with death. By shifting debates about capital punishment away from familiar disputes about desert and deterrence toward neglected questions about its place in fair legal practices, Yost succeeds in altering the parameters of scholarly discussions surrounding capital punishment's defensibility. * Michael Cholbi, Department of Philosophy, Cal Poly Pomona *

Author Information

Benjamin S. Yost is Professor of Philosophy, Adjunct at Cornell University.

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