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Abstract
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The analyses of the death penalty reported in these pages, while diverse in both subject and method, are part of a distinctive post-McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) generation of studies in which the social science literature on capital punishment has begun to stand separate from ever present constitutional litigation on death penalty issues. This independence of scholarship from litigation has come as a consequence of rejection: A ma- jority on the U.S. Supreme Court has forcefully rebuffed the attempts of social scientists to influence the constitutional law of capital punishment.
As is often the case, however, rejection has its liberating aspects. Freed from preoccupation with current Supreme Court cases, scholars are now considering a wider and richer range of issues than a litigation focus would allow and are free to consider questions without regard to whether they might threaten embarrassment to advocates of an anti-capital punishment position. The post-McKleskey scholars can speak in their own voices rather than phrasing both questions and answers in the carefully chosen phrases of tomorrow's expert witnesses. Rejection by the Supreme Court thus has rekindled the independence of the social and behavioral sciences. In the long run, this independence could both illuminate the administration of the death penalty in the United States and help hasten its end.
I will pursue this theme in three short installments. Section I sets forth a capsule history of the involvement of social and behavioral scientists in the campaign against capital punish- ment and will speculate on how close involvement with litigation might influence the conduct and reporting of research. Section II surveys the contributions in this volume, with special emphasis on their independence from ongoing constitutional litigation. A third section lists a few of the issues I hope future research on the death penalty will address. Section III closes by suggesting that social science's broad understanding of the death penalty may yet serve the ends of its abolition in the not distant future.
Language: en |