Book Review: Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution
| Author | Paul J. Kaplan |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480606065919 |
| Date | 01 August 2006 |
| Published date | 01 August 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
(British Journal of Criminology, 2005) but which similarly lacks a normative
framework to evaluate theoretically the harms done and to contribute to the
development of a more adequate system of governance with which to combat
states’ inclinations towards violence. Critical feminist and post-Marxist politi-
cal theory makes injustices embedded in contemporary economic, cultural,
political and legal cultures visible and criticizable (Fraser, p. 62) by providing
conceptual tools for evaluation, and also offers resources for those of us who
see criminology as an endeavour contributing to normative reconstruction of
societies’ responses to radical diversity.
References
Bauman, Z. (2004) Europe: An Unfinished Adventure. Cambridge: Polity.
British Journal of Criminology (2005) 45(4) Special Issue on State Crime.
Derrida, J. (2003) ‘On Cosmopolitanism’, in J. Derrida On Cosmopolitanism
and Forgiveness. Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes. London:
Routledge.
Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’
Condition. New York: Routledge.
Honneth, Axel (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of
Social Conflicts. Trans. Joel Anderson. Cambridge: Polity.
Austin Sarat
Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 325 pp. (including ap-
pendices, notes and references).
•Reviewed by Paul J. Kaplan, University of California, Irvine, USA
DOI: 10.1177/1362480606065919
In his new book, Austin Sarat grapples with a vexing legal problem that
clemency poses for a liberal legal order purportedly committed to the rule of
law. The problem is that clemency is a legal act not especially disciplined by
the law—it is an unchecked power held by chief executives, a power recently,
and famously, exercised by Illinois Governor George Ryan in his decision to
commute the death sentences of all of Illinois’ 167 condemned prisoners. As
Sarat points out, Ryan’s act of clemency was extremely controversial, raising
not just the hackles of death penalty advocates, but also worrying those death
penalty opponents who viewed the mass commutation as a dangerously
unaccountable and undemocratic act of sovereign power (see pp. 2–3).
But regardless of its legality, was Ryan’s mass commutation a merciful act?
Sarat doesn’t think so. As an opponent of capital punishment, Sarat approves
Book Reviews 401
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