Not the Marrying Kind: A Review of Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment

Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment by Carol and Jordan Steiker is, as the introduction states, “the story of how the American death penalty has come full circle over the past fifty years.” There have been quite a few books written about the American death penalty, so when I agreed to evaluate the submitted manuscript of Courting Death for a potential publisher, I doubted that another history would be especially enlightening. But Courting Death won me over. After my first read, it became my number one recommendation for the legal generalist—or lay reader—who wants a sophisticated understanding of the past, present, and future of the American death penalty. After the second read, undertaken for this review, I realized that it has almost as much to offer for the scholar who specializes in capital punishment law. It was this second read that prompted me to think more about the consequences of the Supreme Court’s failure (refusal? inability?) to sustain a focus on any of the problems that bedevil the administration of the death penalty; to employ the courtship metaphor embodied in the title of the Steikers’ book, the Supreme Court may be good for a couple of fun dates, but it’s not headed for the altar anytime soon.