A potent argument for the death penalty

Thanks to this post by Eugene Volokh at the The Volokh Conspiracy, I see that University of Chicago Law Professors Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule have produced an interesting paper on capital punishment entitled “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs.”   The paper’s abstract and a link for downloading are available here.

As Eugene highlights, this article makes a number of significant points, and the (well-deserved) reputation of Sunstein and Vermeule will likely ensure the paper garners attention outside the blogsphere.   I find the topic and approach pursued by Sunstein and Vermeule quite engaging, in part because every year I challenge students to make arguments against the death penalty if they first assume capital punishment does deter and thereby saves a certain number of innocent lives.  In their paper,  Sunstein and Vermeule build on recent deterrence literature to suggest that capital punishment may in fact be morally obligatory.

If time and energy permits, I hope to comment more on this work soon.  In the meantime, readers are highly encouraged to weigh in with comments.