Description
Book SynopsisRefusing to eradicate the death penalty, the U.S. has attempted to reform and rationalize capital punishment through federal constitutional law. While execution chambers remain active in several states, Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker argue that the fate of the American death penalty is likely to be sealed by this failed judicial experiment.
Trade ReviewThis is the most important book about the death penalty for a generation and, likely, ever. Anyone who cares about the state of justice in America should read this book. -- Lincoln Caplan, journalist and Visiting Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School
Courting Death is a brilliant and insightful book with a powerful thesis, namely that the death penalty in the United States has been unwittingly regulated to death. It is the most forceful and significant intervention I have read on the question of capital punishment to date, a remarkable contribution to our legal, historical, and political debates. -- Bernard E. Harcourt, author of
Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital AgeCourting Death charts precisely the past and present of what has sadly become a uniquely American dilemma and, most importantly, sets out the doctrinal road map that will likely guide Supreme Court Justices in the future. Written by the most respected capital punishment scholars of the day, it is essential reading. -- Michael Meltsner, author of
Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment[The Steikers] provide a clear and comprehensive look at the 40-year modern history of capital punishment in the United States since its reinstatement in 1976…
Courting Death provides an excellent survey of the history of capital punishment and the prospects of abolition…The Steikers explain technical legal issues with such clarity that their book is highly accessible to lawyer and layperson alike. -- Stephen Rohde * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Carol and Jordan Steiker…are the leading contemporary scholars of the death penalty. In
Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment they have brilliantly defined—in language accessible to the general reader—the massive dysfunction of the current system and the course that a future Supreme Court could take to do away with it. -- Michael Meltsner * Huffington Post *
The Steikers deliver an extraordinarily well-documented, forceful and ferocious assault on state and federal administration of capital punishment since then.
Courting Death is, almost certainly, the best book on this subject. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Huffington Post *
Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker (sister and brother) have written a revealing book about the history of the death penalty in the U.S. and, in particular, the continued difficulties the Supreme Court has had in attempting to regulate capital punishment so that it conforms to constitutional standards…[An] excellent book. -- Jed S. Rakoff * New York Review of Books *
