Peculiar Institution tells a fascinating and important story that illuminates why the death penalty is so problematic and yet so well suited to American practices. -- Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition Peculiar Institution provides the best explanation I have ever read as to why the United States, alone among western democracies, retains the death penalty, and why we have the odd system we do, in which a very small percentage of the people sentenced to death are actually executed. -- Stuart Banner, author of American Property This is indispensable reading for students of criminal justice, race, and American culture, for lawyers and judges in the pathways of death, and for all who want to understand why our country can neither put capital punishment to any good use nor put an end to it. -- Anthony G. Amsterdam, University Professor and Professor of Law, New York University
David Garland is Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at New York University.
Peculiar Institution tells a fascinating and important story that
illuminates why the death penalty is so problematic and yet so well
suited to American practices.
*Austin Sarat, author of When the State Kills: Capital
Punishment and the American Condition*
Peculiar Institution provides the best explanation I have ever read
as to why the United States, alone among western democracies,
retains the death penalty, and why we have the odd system we do, in
which a very small percentage of the people sentenced to death are
actually executed.
*Stuart Banner, author of American Property*
This is indispensable reading for students of criminal justice,
race, and American culture, for lawyers and judges in the pathways
of death, and for all who want to understand why our country can
neither put capital punishment to any good use nor put an end to
it.
*Anthony G. Amsterdam, University Professor and Professor of Law,
New York University*
Why does the United States, alone among Western democracies, still
have the death penalty? It's not a new question, but David Garland
provides fresh answers from a multilayered analysis...The title
hints at the most provocative part of Garland's answer. In American
history, the "peculiar institution" is slavery. Anyone who thinks
its vestiges were wiped out by the Emancipation Proclamation or
civil rights laws should read this book and think again.
*Boston Globe*
Some of [Garland's] eminently readable prose reminds me of Alexis
de Tocqueville's nineteenth-century narrative about his visit to
America; it has the objective, thought-provoking quality of an
astute observer rather than that of an interested participant in
American politics...In his view, an important reason Americans
retain capital punishment is their fascination with death. While
neither the glamour nor the gore that used to attend public
executions remains today, he observes, capital cases still generate
extensive commentary about victims' deaths and potential deaths of
defendants. Great works of literature, like best-selling
paperbacks, attract readers by discussing killings and revenge.
Garland suggests that the popularity of the mystery story is part
of the culture that keeps capital punishment alive...While he has
studiously avoided stating conclusions about the morality, wisdom,
or constitutionality of capital punishment, Garland's empirical
analysis speaks to all three...I commend Peculiar Institution to
participants in the political process.
*New York Review of Books*
[A] magisterial account of the origins, the development, and the
transformation of capital punishment.
*New Republic online*
[Garland] makes a convincing case that lynching is a key thread
that shapes the American death penalty. Execution-night rallies,
news stories that emphasize victims' families and a legal system
that lets county officials and local juries set the wheels of death
in motion all contain echoes of the mob.
*Texas Observer*
[Garland] aims to deepen our understanding of why we still have a
death penalty when nations toward whom we feel most kindred do not.
In the tradition of de Toqueville, Dickens, Chesterton and Gunnar
Myrdal, Garland, who hails from the Scottish Lowlands, casts the
discerning eye of the outsider on us. And to compelling result.
*America*
In Peculiar Institution, David Garland brings a distinctive
approach to explaining why the United States stands alone in
retaining capital punishment...Instead of asking why America bucked
the Western trend towards abolition, Garland sets out to discover
what made abolition possible for other countries. By putting the
rise and (gradual) fall of capital punishment in a broad historical
and comparative perspective, he is able to develop a subtle account
of the changing forms and functions of capital punishment over time
and of its relationship to the formation of states...Garland's
readable book is a major contribution to our understanding not only
of capital punishment in America, but also of the relationship
between punishment, state and society. His insistence on the
applicability of a general thesis to this peculiar case, and his
careful illustration of the interaction between cultural and
structural variables are particularly impressive; as is his deft
handling of the analogies and disanalogies between capital
punishment and lynching (an image which has featured prominently in
protests at [Troy] Davis's execution). Peculiar Institution opens
up a large agenda for comparative research both within and beyond
the United States, helping us to understand why--however widespread
the criticism of Davis's execution, and however substantial the
doubts about his guilt--capital punishment in America is likely to
survive.
*Times Literary Supplement*
How is it that the USA alone among Western societies clings to such
barbarity? David Garland's Peculiar Institution--the evocation of
the stain of slavery is quite deliberate--provides a deeply
thoughtful and original explanation of this phenomenon. Subtle and
provocative, it deserves a wide audience.
*Times Literary Supplement*
A magnificently thorough and even-handed book on the death penalty
in modern America.
*Taipei Times*
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