Review from previous edition Hannah Arendt ends Eichmann in Jerusalem with a statement about the sentencing of Adolf Eichmann: "we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you." Kramer's excellent new book develops an original line of argument that echoes that Arendtian sentiment into what ... Read morehe calls the purgative justification for capital punishment....Kramer's book is a well-argued and inventive work that will generate new avenues of discussion in legal and moral philosophy
Eric M. Rovie, Political Studies Review
Matthew Kramer's book The Ethics of Capital Punishment is a significant achievement. Not only does it offer a thorough and up-to-date discussion of traditional justifications for the death penalty, it also attempts to offer an alternative, novel justification for it, something that Kramer calls the purgative rationale. Although I am not entirely sympathetic to this aim, I think that carving out a new territory within this already crowded intellectual space is something which ought to be commended
John Danaher, Criminal Law and Philosophy
The book's provocative thesis, connecting moral philosophy with legal scholarship, will surely occupy a position of importance in ongoing debates within criminal law
Harvard Law Review
In this bold philosophical inquiry, Professor Matthew Kramer develops a justification for the death penalty as a sui generis concept: the purgative rationale. After grappling with and rebutting the standard justifications for capital punishment deterrence, retributivism, incapacitation, and denunciation Professor Kramer develops the purgative rationale, arguing that a community is tainted in other words, its moral integrity is lessened by the continuing existence of anyone who has perpetrated some especially hideous crimes
Harvard Law Review
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