City University of New York Law Review Volume 7 Issue 2 Fall 2004 Scrupulous in Applying the Law: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Capital Punishment Sidney Harring CUNY School of Law Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier CUNY School of Law Follow this and additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr Part of the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Sidney Harring & Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, Scrupulous in Applying the Law: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Capital Punishment, 7 N.Y. City L. Rev. 241 (2004). Available at: 10.31641/clr070203 The CUNY Law Review is published by the Office of Library Services at the City University of New York. For more information please contact
[email protected]. Scrupulous in Applying the Law: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Capital Punishment Acknowledgements The authors thank Julie Graves, Carlos Medina, and Rita Verga for their research assistance. This article is available in City University of New York Law Review: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/clr/vol7/iss2/4 SCRUPULOUS IN APPLYING THE LAW: JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT1 Sidney Harring* Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier** I. INTRODUCTION Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s appointment to the United States Supreme Court in 1993 coincided with rising concerns about the use of the death penalty in the United States. That same year marked the publication of Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walk- ing,2 which has been identified as the beginning of the Death Pen- alty Moratorium Movement in the United States.3 During February 1994 of Justice Ginsburg’s first term, her colleague, Justice Harry Blackmun, wrote a decision concluding that the death penalty was unconstitutional.4 In the following years, new discoveries about in- nocent defendants on death row and the adoption of death penalty moratoriums put the spotlight on systemic problems with capital punishment in the United States.5 As she took her seat on the Supreme Court bench, Justice * Professor of Law, City University of New York School of Law.