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Death Penalty: a Philosophical and Theological Perspective, 30 J UIC Law Review Volume 30 Issue 2 Article 6 Winter 1997 Death Penalty: A Philosophical and Theological Perspective, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 463 (1997) Walter Berns Nancy Bothne William Bowers Richard Dieter Richard Land See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.uic.edu/lawreview Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Human Rights Law Commons, International Humanitarian Law Commons, Law and Philosophy Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, Legal History Commons, Legislation Commons, and the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Walter Berns et al., Death Penalty: A Philosophical and Theological Perspective, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 463 (1997) https://repository.law.uic.edu/lawreview/vol30/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UIC Law Open Access Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in UIC Law Review by an authorized administrator of UIC Law Open Access Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Death Penalty: A Philosophical and Theological Perspective, 30 J. Marshall L. Rev. 463 (1997) Authors Walter Berns, Nancy Bothne, William Bowers, Richard Dieter, Richard Land, James Lund, and Austin Sarat This article is available in UIC Law Review: https://repository.law.uic.edu/lawreview/vol30/iss2/6 THE DEATH PENALTY: A PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE WALTER BERNS* NANCY BOTHNE** WILLIAM BOWERS*** RICHARD C. DIETER**** RICHARD D. LAND***** JAMES LUND****** AUSTIN SARAT******* * Mr. Berns is John M. Olin University Professor emeritus at George- town University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He has taught at the University of Toronto, Cornell University and Yale Uni- versity. Mr. Berns' government service includes membership on the National Council on the Humanities, the Council of Scholars in the Library of Con- gress, and the Judicial Fellows Commission. Mr. Berns has been a Guggen- heim, Rockefeller, and Fulbright fellow and a Phi Beta Kappa lecturer. ** M.S., Northwestern University, 1993; B.A., University of Tennessee, 1979. Ms. Bothne is the Midwest Regional Director for Amnesty International, USA. She works with the staff and volunteer members in developing and implementing strategies for Amnesty's human rights agenda in the midwest. Ms. Bothne has lobbied with city, state and federal governments on behalf of civil liberties and civil rights issues. In 1996, Ms. Bothne was named in One Hundred Women Making a Difference, in a recent edition of Today's Chicago Woman. *** Ph.D., Columbia University, 1966; B.A., Washington and Lee Univer- sity, 1957. Dr. Bowers is Principal Research Scientist in the College of Crimi- nal Justice at Northeastern University. Dr. Bowers is presently the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation sponsored Capital Jury Proj- ect underway in fifteen states. **** J.D., Gerogetown University Law Center, 1992; M.S., Ohio State Uni- versity, 1971; B.S., University of Notre Dame, 1968. Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center, Washington, D.C. Mr. Dieter is the author of numerous reports and articles on the death penalty and serves as national spokesman to the media on this subject. ***** D. Phil., Oxford University; Th. M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; B.A., magna cum laude, Princeton University. Dr. Land is Presi- dent-Treasurer of the Christian Life Commission, of the Southern Baptist Convention's agency for "applied Christianity." ****** M.A., Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, 1984; B.A., Holy Cross Col- lege, 1974. Mr. Lund is Co-Director of the Office of Ministry of Peace and Jus- tice. *******J.D., Yale Law School, 1988; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1973; M.A., University of Wisconsin, 1970; B.A., Providence College, 1969. Dr. Sarat is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He has held positions as Visiting Assistant Professor and Visiting Lecturer at Yale University, as Visiting As- sistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and as Staff Social Scientist at the U.S. Department of Justice. The John MarshallLaw Review [30:463 MR. RUEBNER: It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Spanbauer, who chairs today. She will introduce the moderator. MS. SPANBAUER: Thank you, Professor Ruebner. Professor Donald Beschle of The John Marshall Law School will serve as moderator for our afternoon panel. He teaches anti-trust, consti- tutional law, property and religion and the law. Before joining the John Marshall faculty, he was associated with the New York Law Firm of Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. He received a B.A. and J.D. degree from New York University. He has published over a dozen law review articles, the most recent of which is enti- tled, You Have Got To Be Careful. This article will be forthcoming in the North Carolina Law Review. His publications have been cited not only by commentators, but also by the United States Su- preme Court. I give you a colleague who I am proud to be associ- ated with, Professor Donald Beschle. MR. BESCHLE: I am going to keep this very short. I sort of feel that moderators at these things should be judged largely like baseball umpires, the best of them you hardly notice that they're there. A law school has a very strong tendency to think that legal issues are decided in a self-contained world of lawyers and judges. Of course, that is not the case. When dealing with constitutional issues, there is a tendency for gab. To term something is constitu- tionally permissible does not necessarily determine whether it is a course that should be taken. And with those two caveats in mind, we can begin with our second panel of the day. Unlike the morning panel, most are not lawyers. Rather, they bring a number of different perspectives. From empirical and theoretical, insights from jurisprudence, to religion, sociology and political science. And they bring to bear on the recurring and agonizing question of whether it is not better that one man should die so that the whole nation should not perish. Our format, as it was this morning, is that each speaker will be given approximately fifteen minutes to present his or her paper. Those who work in constitutional law know there is an ongoing debate about the meaning of words and how hard fixed they are. Dictionary mean- ings are very flexible. Amazingly, when we come to these confer- ences, even those who argue about the hard and fixed nature of words, tend to be very flexible when interpreting the phrase fifteen minutes. But we do have a long, long list of very distinguished speakers. And, again, we do want to leave some time for colloquy among the speakers and questions from the audience. If I were to fully introduce each of our panelists, we would be out of time. Having said that, I am sure that they will understand if I just drastically shorten their backgrounds instead. I am sure they would rather speak than be spoken of. Starting at my immediate left and working down the podium, we begin with Walter Berns, who is a university professor emeri- 1997] A Philosophicaland Theological Perspective tus at Georgetown University and a resident scholar at the Ameri- can Enterprise Institute. Dr. Berns received his bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa, his post-graduate degree from the London School of Economics and received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. He has taught at Yale, Cornell and the University of Toronto in addition to Georgetown. He has been a member of the National Council on Humanities and the Council of Scholars in the Library of Congress. In 1983 he was the alternate United States representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. He is the author of numerous books and articles. The most relevant for pur- poses of this conference is his 1979 work entitled For Capital Pun- ishment. To the left of Dr. Berns is Ms. Nancy Bothne. She is the Mid- west Regional Director for Amnesty International, USA. She works with staff and volunteer members developing strategies on amnesty and human rights. She has lobbied cities and states and the federal government on behalf of the civil liberties and civil rights issues. She has a Master of Science in Communications from Northwestern University. To Ms. Bothne's left is William Bowers, who is a professor at the College of Criminal Justice Northeastern University. He re- ceived his bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University and his doctorate in sociology at Columbia University. For the last twenty-five years he has conducted extensive research and has been published widely on the subject of capital punishment. Since 1990 he has been a principal investigator in the Capital Jury Proj- ect, which studies how capital jurors make sentencing decisions. Early findings of that study were reported in the Fall 1995 sym- posium issue of the Indiana Law Journal, which was devoted to that project. Those of you not familiar with the Capital Jury Proj- ect may want to take a look at this issue of the IndianaLaw Jour- nal. Next, as we move down the line, is Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Notre Dame, his M.S. from Ohio State University and his law degree from Georgetown. He has written and spoken on the death penalty issue for both profes- sional and popular audiences. He has presented legislative testi- mony and prepared reports for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. Next to Mr. Dieter is Dr. Richard Land, the President of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He received his bachelor's degree from Princeton, his Master's of Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theologic Seminary and his Ph.D.
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