Book Description

This issue is a contemporary look at the development of death penalty law and historical figures in this process, in Symposium: "A Look Back at the History of Capital Punishment." The New England Law Review now offers its issues in convenient digital formats for e-reader devices, apps, pads, smartphones, and computers. This final issue of Volume 48, Summer 2014, contains articles by leading figures of the academy. Contents of this issue include a Symposium on the history of U.S. capital punishment, featuring such recognized legal scholars as Evan J. Mandery, Michael Meltsner, Phyllis Goldfarb, and Zachary Baron Shemtob. The history and anomalies of the development of capital punishment law in the U.S. Supreme Court is explored, as well as cutting-edge issues in the politics of the death penalty (readily accessible to historians, nonlawyers, and others interested in the people and ideas behind the historical trend). Research includes telling interviews with past law clerks and other participants in the process of developing death penalty law over the years, and insightful analysis of the import of such decision-making and the impact of race. In addition, extensive student research explores such fields as mode-of-operation cases for tort lawsuits beyond the supermarket setting, the Morton memo and detention of asylum seekers, and expanding same-sex protections at work in harassment cases beyond the notion of sexual desire. Quality digital formatting includes linked notes, active table of contents, active URLs in notes, and proper Bluebook citations.