The death penalty: Law, politics, and advocacy

The overall aim of this unit is to provide students with a good understanding of the scope and practice of the death penalty as well as the movement—backed by international organisations, human rights treaties and the domestic courts—to abolish the death penalty.

Specific aims involve exploring the relationship between international human rights law and the domestic protection of human rights. Throughout the unit, students will be asked to draw on recent and controversial cases as well as social scientific literature. The unit aims to encourage students to explore the politics of the abolitionist movement, including the arguments and forces that have been at work to achieve abolition and those that have been used to resist it. This unit focuses on the death penalty in the Asia-Pacific region.