"This relationship between the citizen and his or her rights does not even make sense in a classical-juridical context. If we consider, for instance, the right to life of the individual in the classical-juridical model, it is the sovereign, and the sovereign alone, who is capable of overriding it. Moreover, should the sovereign choose to violate an individual's right to life, consent has nothing to do with the process. The subject is deprived of the legal protection of full citizenship before his or her life is taken. It is true that many legal systems describe situations in which a citizen's right to life is forfeit-”honor killing” being an obvious example of this process in the nineteenth century French, Italian, and Ottoman criminal code. It is likewise true that the contemporary debate surrounding euthanasia-although arguably more a biopolitical than a political debate-largely has to do with whether or not a citizen can consent to a violation of his or her right to life. But even so, there has been no moment in either of these debates at which the classical juridical sovereign has given up the monopoly on the right to life, or in which the biopolitical sovereign has given up the monopoly on the right to death. There is no question of consent on the part of the citizen- beyond, some might argue, the consent that tied this citizen into an original social contract-because it is the sovereign's right alone to “choose.”"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Miller, Ruth Austin (2007).“The Limits of Bodily Integrity: Abortion, Adultery, and Rape Legislation in Comparative Perspective”. Ashgate Publishing. p.8
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Capital_punishment
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. At various times, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent.
71 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Capital punishment →
Related Quotes
"Ned Stark: The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."
"Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compa…"
"A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge."
"What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real …"
"The abolition of capital punishment, surely coming, is delayed by God's edict, "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man …"
"The punishment of death is pernicious to society, from the example of barbarity it affords. If the passions, or the n…"
"Death is an unusually severe and degrading punishment; there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily…"
"In the disposition of capital cases in the United States, the median elapsed time between sentence and execution is a…"
"The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsi…"
"Bran Stark: Our way is the old way."