"Essays in this collection are consistently strong, offering penetrating and provocative analyses of pain's role in law and punishment. As such, they illuminate important and often neglected dimensions of criminal punishment and judicial decision making. Taken together, the essays are characterized by skillful and thoughtful interdisciplinary inquiry. . . . Moreover, the essays show quite clearly how connections between pain, death, and law provide legitimacy to a legal order that puts humans to death. . . . [A] close reading of this innovative volume will assist those interested in conducting grounded studies that explore further not only the sources of legal legitimacy, but also how we may ultimately disrupt the legitimacy of a legal order where 'legal interpretation plays on a field of pain and death.'"
—Mark Kessler, Bates College, Law and Politics Book Review, August 2001
— Mark Kessler, Bates College, Law and Politics Book Review