Death Penalty Seminar

The study of the death penalty in the United States, including:

• The history of capital punishment
• Arguments supporting and opposing capital punishment
• Constitutional issues under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments
• The role of mitigating and aggravating evidence in guiding the sentencer’s decision to impose
• Exclusion of jurors
• The use of psychiatric experts in capital trials’ state post-conviction remedies
• The scope of federal habeas corpus review
• Constitutional challenges to the arbitrary imposition of the death sentence to those deserving death
• The recently-expanded federal death penalty
• International law and capital punishment