More on yesterday's theme, respecting the death penalty. I will use a post on the Slate fray as a starting point.
What is the definition of justice in this context? ... To blankly state that the victims want "revenge and not justice," is to seriously misunderstand them. Further, it is to seriously misunderstand the role of law and punishment.
The secularist measures crime by human standards and accepts, even embraces, the margin of error that would be unnecessary for a divine being to whom nothing is inscrutable. In a world of law, the absence of just revenge poses as great a threat to both liberty and order as revenge gone wild.
-- Susan Jacoby
In other words, simply speaking of "revenge" when discussing family members and so forth who want murderers executed is sometimes a bit too fast and loose. There is a self-righteous tone there, suggesting that they are just letting their rank emotions lead the way, while the speaker is a more reasonable sort concerned with balanced justice. There is a difference between revenge and retribution:
Jacoby treats revenge and retribution as synonymous, but perhaps there's a subtle difference. ... "revenge" [has] the most tenuous connection to the perpetrators ... Retribution, on the other hand, addresses moral culpability - which is why virtually everyone is repelled by the idea of executing a person with diminished mental capacity.
-- Cathy Young, reviewing Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge by Susan Jacoby
In the case of murder, it is very difficult to precisely say what is just. If you accept the idea of a social contract, you get out what you put in. Under such a definition try, convict and kill the bastard. It is precisely what he perpetrated on another, probably for a very stupid reason.
Three problems here. First, many societies do not have a death penalty, or one very narrow (likely arbitrarily so) and rarely applied. [Thus, almost forty states technically have the death penalty, but a mere handful have nearly all the people on death row, some having none.] They too have a "social contract." In fact, many societies believe the death penalty is simply uncivilized, unrepublican. Thus, after the country underwent major republican changes including a new constitution, the South Africa Supreme Court struck the penalty down on such grounds.
Second, we do not execute people "precisely" the way the person killed. That is the whole point -- we are not bloodthirsty killers, or at least, that is the case in theory. Third, the easy use of "bastard" rankles. I know this can be seen as a bit politically correct, since a murderer is likely a bastard. But, this has a certain flavor to it -- like we are executing not a person/citizen, but an "other." Someone without parents or family. Makes it so much easier, huh?
I'm not necessarily sure how I feel about the death penalty, but I think it has a place. It is a final solution to the question of, "How exactly do you deal with a human being who has irreparably broken the social contract?"
It is "a" final solution. A poor one, especially as shown in practice. A final word on the author of the comments. S/he works in medicine and is an opponent of abortion. I believe perhaps even an opponent of morning after pills, though perhaps just sympathetic to them. But, not of the death penalty. In fact, s/he is able to use rather slipshod reasoning to defend it, including treating the executed as a non-person of sorts. The same person who wants a woman not to have an abortion, even if we are dealing with a month old embryo.
I know there is a way to differentiate the two stances, and the person did not fully express views on capital punishment, but sometimes the disconnect is a bit glaring.
[Update: A reply to my Slate post is also worth reading. Overall, the person is more reasonable than my comments might imply, but there does seem a troubling outer coating that rankles. After all, the person thought Bush was better than Kerry ... though is a fan of Edwards. I saw some people like this, though surely E-K-B would still be favored over B-E-K, right? I repeat my annoyance at those who fail to see that Kerry, not just Bush and the press, was also the problem in 2004.]