Hugo Adam Bedau

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE in focus

The issues surrounding civil disobedience have been discussed since at least 399 BC and, in the wake of such recent events as the protest at Tiananmen Square, are still of great relevance. By presenting classic and current philosophical reflections on the issues, this book presents all the basic materials needed for a philosophical assessment of the nature and justification of civil disobedience. The pieces included range from classic essays by leading contemporary thinkers such as Rawls, Raz and Singer. Hugo Adam Bedaus introduction sets out the issues and shows how the various authors shed light on each aspect of them.

How to Argue about the Death Penalty.

Argument over the death penalty — especially in the United States during the past generation — has been concentrated in large part on trying to answer various disputed questions of fact . Among them two have been salient: is the death penalty a better deterrent to crime (especially murder) than the alternative of imprisonment? Is the death penalty administered in a discriminatory way — in particular, are black or other nonwhite offenders (or offenders whose victims are white) more likely to be tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed than whites (or than offenders whose victims are nonwhite)? Other questions of fact have also been explored, including these two: what is the risk that an innocent person could actually be executed for a crime he did not commit? What is the risk that a person convicted of a capital felony but not executed will commit another capital felony?

Physical interventions to alter behavior in a punitive environment: some moral reflections on new technology

There is, I suppose, a wide variety of techniques of social control that can be gathered together under the heading of physical intervention techniques. The term is chosen so as to be as inclusive as possible and yet to suggest an analogy to the medical notion of physical intervention for therapeutic purposes, since the role of medical research and medical administration in the development and the use of these techniques is a prominent feature of many of them. In order to be as specific as possible at the outset, I use the term &dquo;physical intervention techniques&dquo; to mean one or more of the following four sorts or sets of techniques:

Book Reviews : Condemned to Die: Life under Sentence of Death, Robert Johnson, Pp. 190. New York, Elsevier, 1981

persons were under death sentence in a dozen states. As I write, three dozen states hold about a thousand men marked for death-the greatest number of persons in our history awaiting execution at one time. It is surprising that it took so long for death row prisoners to become the subject of intensive study. Throughout this century, there has always been somebody awaiting execution, and in the past two decades about three thousand have been in this precarious situation. Why, in all this time, have we heard so little about these faceless masses? Now that we have

Military service and moral obligation

The author investigates the view that there is a moral obligation to serve in the armed forces of the nation State of which one is a citizen resident (with special reference to young American men at the present time). It is conceded that under current law in this country there may be such a legal obligation, that many men may be obliged to render such service, and that under certain circumstances even a moral obligation to serve may also exist. What is denied is that any of the familiar theories of moral obligation is adequate in existing circumstances to establish this thesis in general. The result is either that a new theory of moral obligation must be developed to fit the current facts, or the present assessment of those facts must be fundamentally revised, or we must concede that draftees and men generally have no such moral obligation of service at all.

Death Penalty, Overview

The death penalty (capital punishment) has been one of the most widely used punishments; no people or nation seems to have been exempt from some recourse to this form of violence under the law. Today, the death penalty is still in evidence, but many countries have abolished it entirely and others have severely limited its use, preferring instead to sentence capital offenders to long terms of imprisonment. The principal explanation for the decline in the use of the death penalty is twofold: the availability of imprisonment as an adequate alternative punishment, and the increasing influence of international human rights law. Underlying that influence is the belief (more widespread in Europe today than in the United States) that the death penalty is cruel, inhumane, and unnecessary.

Reflections on Psychiatry and the Death Penalty

Louis Jolyon West is one of the small number of American psychiatrists who have brought to bear their medical and psychiatric expertise in criticism of social policy and practice, especially that of capital punishment.

Book Reviews : Sex, Drugs, Death and the Law: An Essay on Human Rights and Overcriminalization, David A. J. Richards, Pp. 316. Totowa, New Jersey, Rowman and Littlefield, 1982.

When does the reach of the criminal law exceed its proper grasp? There are two quite different kinds of general answers to this question. One says that the law is excessive whenever the resources expended in its enforcement are greater than the benefits obtained. Efficiency experts, cost-benefit analysts, and utilitarians generally accept such a criterion. They thereby confine all disputes to particular facts, for example, whether the police and court costs involved in sweeping prostitutes off the streets at (regular or irregular) intervals provide

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Book reviewed in this article: Mental Disabilities and Criminal Responsibility. By Herbert Fingarette and Ann Fingarette Hasse.

Soundness of Mind and ‘Mental Setting’

rectly invalidate any state or federal death penalty statutes. It did hold in its ~er curiam decision that in the case of William Furman (and two others, Lucius Jackson and Elmer Branch) the death sentence was &dquo;cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments&dquo;and thus the &dquo;judgment in each case&dquo; was reversed and &dquo;the cases remanded for further proceedings.&dquo;1 The &dquo;further proceedings&dquo; consisted solely of resentencing to life imprisonment. Described in the narrowest possible way, this was all that was settled in the historic Supreme Court ruling on capital punishment of June 29, 1972. Perhaps it is possible, nevertheless, to argue that in a looser sense the Supreme Court really did &dquo;abolish&dquo; the death penalty after all. To see whether this is true, it is necessary to review how each state in the nation has responded in the months since Furtizan. This is a lengthly and complex story to tell; it is also far from com-