Moral and Legal Issues Concering Capital Punishment essays

Moral and Legal Issues Concering Capital Punishment essays 1. The main arguments David Gelernter makes related to the issue of capital punishment are focused in fact on the idea of strict justice and absolute equality between deeds. In this sense, he is the supporter of a certain sense of divine justice which at times must be made with a human hand. However, he questions the validity of the the actual act of the death penalty taking into account the fact that this punishment is in fact an arbitrary solution. In this sense, he asks himself in relation to a particular situation, but in fact under a general tone Why did we execute the penitent and spare the impenitent? (Gelernter, 1998). Therefore, he sets the question in relation to the actual fairness of the decisions taken when the issue of capital punishment is discussed. More precisely, he argues that indeed, the idea of divine justice is the actual engine which should drive the behavior of the individuals. At the same time however, there are situations in which mistakes are made and innoc ent or at least less guilty individuals suffer. At the same time, Gelernter argues the issue of the human nature. In this sense, he considers that indeed a murdered must be punished. At the same time however, it is rather hard to consider that murderous acts will eventually stop as every crime is answered with a crime. More precisely, he underlines the fact that generally speaking the capital punishment represents a useful punishment if we were a community in which murder was a shocking anomaly and thus in effect a solved problem. But we are not. Our big cities are full of murderers at large (Gelernter, 1998). Therefore, although Gelernter argues that the capital punishment is a communal and somewhat justifiable answer to a crime, it is not effective for the task it is set up to undertake. His arguments are not convincingly in favor of the capital punishment because although we may consider talionlis lex as justifiable, we can...