From: price@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory Neil Price)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: A Black Contractarian View on the Death Penalty
Date: 6 Oct 1992 21:27:33 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Distribution: soc
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.30

In article <1asvouINN6k6@uwm.edu> price@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory Neil Price) writes:
>The sentiments expressed by hans@iesd.auc.dk in regard to the death
>penalty appear sentimental, and besides the point. The fact that the
>death penalty disproportionately, and unjustly affects Black Americans
>is not a sufficient reason to reconsider, or abolish it. From a
>contractarian viewpoint, allowing the state to execute criminals
>can be rationalized, regardless of disparities in its application
>across race, gender, and class. In a state of nature, the physically
>strong can dominate the physically weak. Men in general, can in
>a state of nature, distribute hammurabian justice without sanction.
>Clearly, if a civil contract is to be drawn up, no strong man would
>surrender his right to mete out death as justice in order to join  
>civil society,  unless  of   course  the   contrived   state     can
>do it by proxy. It a perfect compromise between the strong and
>the weak. Both get to pursue their enlightened self-interest free
>from the coercion, theft and murder that would prevail in the
>state of nature.
>
>
>What's the point? A good civil society must have a death penalty.
>In fact, one could argue that a (civil) society with a death penalty
>is a good one. Considerations of racial disparities in death sentences
>are  purely sentimental, nor do they completely reveal   how fair
>and just a society is--- A Fair and Just Society must have a Death
>Penaly. (Otherwise how many strongmen would join, or continue  to
>live in it?) 
>
>
>
>G. N. Price 

The sentiments expressed by hans@iesd.auc.dk in regard to the death
penalty appear sentimental, and besides the point. The fact that the
death penalty disproportionately, and unjustly affects Black Americans
is not a sufficient reason to reconsider, or abolish it. From a
contractarian viewpoint, allowing the state to execute criminals
can be rationalized, regardless of disparities in its application
across race, gender, and class. In a state of nature, the physically
strong can dominate the physically weak. Men in general, can in
a state of nature, distribute hammurabian justice without sanction.
Clearly, if a civil contract is to be drawn up, no strong man would
surrender his right to mete out death as justice in order to join  
civil society,  unless  of   course  the   contrived   state     can
do it by proxy. It a perfect compromise between the strong and
the weak. Both get to pursue their enlightened self-interest free
from the coercion, theft and murder that would prevail in the
state of nature.


What's the point? A good civil society must have a death penalty.
In fact, one could argue that a (civil) society with a death penalty
is a good one. Considerations of racial disparities in death sentences
are  purely sentimental, nor do they completely reveal   how fair
and just a society is--- A Fair and Just Society must have a Death
Penaly. (Otherwise how many strongmen would join, or continue  to
live in it?) 



G. N. Price