How have prospects for abolishing the death penalty changed since the 1972 Supreme Court decision, Furman v Georgia? The editor and contributors to Death Penalty in Decline? assess the contemporary death penalty landscape and look at the trends in and attitudes toward capital punishment and its abolition. They highlight factors that are propelling alternatives to the death penalty as well as the obstacles to ending it.

At a time when the United States is undertaking an unprecedented national reconsideration of the death penalty, Death Penalty in Decline? seeks to evaluate how abolitionists might succeed today.

Contributors: John Bessler, Corinna Barrett Lain, James R. Martel, Linda Ross Meyer, Carol S. Steiker, Jordan M. Steiker, and the editor

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. He is the author or editor of several books including Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution; The Death Penalty on the Ballot: American Democracy and the Fate of Capital Punishment; Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty; and Mercy on Trial: What It Means to Stop an Execution.