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4 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y 195 (2009)
Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, and the Abolition Movement

handle is hein.journals/nwjlsopo4 and id is 201 raw text is: Copyright 2009 by Northwestern University School of Law Volume 4 (Fall 2009) Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, and the Abolition Movement John D. Bessler I am certainly not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. -Thomas Jefferson Perhaps the whole business of the retention of the death penalty will seem to the next generation, as it seems to many even now, an anachronism too discordant to be suffered, mocking with grim reproach all our clamorous professions of the sanctity of life. -Benjamin N. Cardozo * Visiting Associate Professor of Law, The George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C. The author has taught a death penalty seminar since 1998, first as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and later at The George Washington University Law School. The author extends a special thanks to Dean Frederick Lawrence for making available a summer research grant; research assistants Michael Ansell, Jonathan Auerbach and Mark Taticchi; his many former students for their thoughtful in-class participation; and the guest speakers who shared their own insights-both in class and in their writings-over the years: the late Hon. Donald P. Lay of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; Sandra Babcock and Joseph Margulies at the Northwestern University School of Law; Robin Maher, Director of the ABA's Death Penalty Representation Project; Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center; David Lillehaug, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota; Susan Karamanian, GW's Associate Dean for International and Comparative Legal Studies; the Hon. Bruce Peterson; and Tom Fraser, John Getsinger, Andre Hanson, Tom Johnson, Steven Kaplan, Steve Pincus, Tim Rank, Jim Volling and Steve Wells-all lawyers in private practice who have worked on capital cases. The author also thanks the Journal's staff, especially George Balgobin, Jason Britt, Sarah Hoffman, Amanda Inskeep, David King, Lauren Matecki, Michelle Olson, and Heather Renwick, for their invaluable editorial assistance. The views expressed here are solely those of the author. ** Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816. This excerpt from Jefferson's letter is one of four inscriptions chiseled in stone at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. *** BENJAMINN. CARDOZO, LAWAND LITERATURE 93-94 (1931). Cardozo made this prediction in 1931, a year before his appointment to the Supreme Court. Carol S. Steiker, Capital Punishment andAmerican Exceptionalism, 81 OR. L. REv. 97, 97 (2002).

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