“Gruesome Spectacles” and Other Recent Scholarship on Domestic Human Rights
Two new publications (one authored by, and one edited by, Austin Sarat) offer perspectives on two important human rights issues facing the U.S.: the death penalty, and efforts to rebuild New Orleans post-Katrina.
On the death penalty: Austin Sarat’s new book Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty (Stanford UP 2014) is noted here. Sarat’s investigation, a careful historical analysis, uncovers that “about three in a hundred American executions over the past century or so have gone badly wrong.” The botched execution in Oklahoma is perhaps the most recent example. Note that the above book link includes a fascinating, in-depth interview with Sarat about the book and his investigation.
On Katrina issues, Austin Sarat is the editor of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (Volume 63), Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Jean Carmalt’s contribution to this volume, Human Rights in Context: International Law and Spatial Injustice in New Orleans, Louisiana, describes the impact of NGO advocacy post-Katrina in shaping UN official’s understanding of the relationship between geography and human rights, and the spatial dimensions of the human rights violations. Carmalt previously wrote on the uses of geography in human rights work in the Human Rights Quarterly, here.