Against Capital Punishment

"The death penalty is the most severe punishment available for those countries that still retain it. Debates about whether it can be justified have run for as long as there has been capital punishment in any society - where each side largely digs in against the other. Benjamin Yost's defence of procedural abolitionism opens a new, convincing front as to why all of us, including retributivists, should not support death as a punishment." - Thom Brooks, Dean & Professor of Law and Government, Durham University

"Philosophically, this book is to date the most sophisticated presentation of the proceduralist case for abolishing capital punishment. Opponents of the death penalty will be able to draw with profit upon Benjamin Yost's nuanced arguments, and supporters of the death penalty will need to come to grips with those arguments in order to counter them." - Matthew H. Kramer, Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge Director of Cambridge Forum for Legal & Political Philosophy Fellow of the British Academy

"Appealing to the inherent human fallibility in the administration of the death penalty, Yost's Against Capital Punishment is a careful (and novel) attempt to show that capital punishment should be abolished. Legitimate legal systems correct and remedy their errors, but this commitment, Yost argues, is incompatible with punishing even the worst criminals with death. By shifting debates about capital punishment away from familiar disputes about desert and deterrence toward neglected questions about its place in fair legal practices, Yost succeeds in altering the parameters of scholarly discussions surrounding capital punishment's defensibility." - Michael Cholbi, Professor of Philosophy, Cal Poly Pomona, Director - California Center for Ethics and Policy