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Capital Punishment in the Era of Globalization: A Partial Test of the Marshall Hypothesis Among College Students

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Abstract

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall’s hypothesis—that knowledge about the death penalty would reduce support for it—has been measured in terms of the public’s receptivity to key arguments for abolition including racial discrimination, lack of deterrent effect, and innocence. The effect of the international contextual argument, however, has gone virtually untested, despite the argument’s increased popularity. This preliminary study examines the impact of the international contextual argument against the death penalty on the opinion of 216 adult American students at a public university in California. The results of this study suggest that student support for the death penalty was decreased by exposure to international contextual information. The research presented in this paper is intended to encourage further investigation into the possibility that American public opinion may be significantly affected by international context.

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Notes

  1. See Atkins v. Virginia (2002), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), and Roper v. Simmons (2005) for examples. Also, for a helpful discussion of the different uses of foreign law in domestic courts, see Whytock, C. (2010).

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Cases Cited

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  • Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Jamila Benkato, Alan W. Clarke, Eve Darian-Smith, and Michelle D. Mioduszewski for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper, Mona Lynch for her guidance, and the anonymous reviewer for their comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology.

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  1. Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine, 2340 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA, 92617, USA

    Levi LaChappelle

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LaChappelle, L. Capital Punishment in the Era of Globalization: A Partial Test of the Marshall Hypothesis Among College Students. Am J Crim Just 39, 839–854 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-014-9263-5

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