Machinery of Death or Machinic Life
Machinery of Death or Machinic Life
Justice Blackmun’s 1994 decision to “tinker with the machinery of death” no more brings into focus the problem of an instantaneous death penalty that was raised by Eighth Amendment objections to the firing squad and electric chair at the end of the nineteenth century. A review of American death penalty jurisprudence reveals that the instant is not the only temporal question raised: the doctrine of “evolving standards” presumes a speed of evolution that is impossible to determine and compares different evolutions among electorates, legislatures, and countries within the international community. By examining those questions in the context of Blackmun’s Callins dissent I argue that what the machinery of death reveals above all is a concept of technological time.
Keywords: constitutionality, Eighth Amendment, evolving standards, instant, international, jurisprudence, machinery, pain
Fordham Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
