Robert Schopp, University of Nebraska, Lincoln School of Law
Several Supreme Court opinions that reject capital punishment specifically or retributive punishment generally as inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution characterize those practices as revenge. They provide little reasoning supporting the contentions that these practices constitute revenge or that this would provide a good reason to repudiate these practices if it were true. Rather, they repudiate these practices in a manner suggesting that the mere characterization as revenge suffices to render them illegitimate. This paper examines the putative relationships among capital punishment, retribution and revenge, and it evaluates the contention that we should civilize our legal institutions by repudiating these practices.