"'When the State Kills' is a major statement about the contemporary politics of the death penalty," said Professor of Political Science Tom Dumm. "What Austin has done, with enormous care and an unflinching eye, is trace the corrosive impact of the continued use of the death penalty on American society."
"In part, my book examines the impact of state killing on our politics, our law and our culture," Sarat said. "I argue that the death penalty damages our democracy; I argue that the death penalty is incompatible with certain critical, legal values; and I argue that the death penalty is a distraction, turning our culture away from unnecessary engagement in thinking about the sources of violence and turning us instead to the search for simple solutions to complex problems."
He explained that most writing about capital punishment exists in two forms. He calls the first an "abstract, moral and philosophical argument," involving questions of the death penalty agreeing with understandings of justice. The second form, he said, is "policy-oriented research," which tries to find out if the death penalty benefits people, for example, by making society safer.
However, Sarat said that, "My book doesn't go in either of the directions of broad, abstract work or policy-oriented research. I'm interested less in what the death penalty does for us than in what the death penalty does to us."
Conversation about capital punishment in the United States is currently at a critical point, according to Sarat. "There are new doubts about whether this country ought to continue to use the death penalty," Sarat said. "I hope that my book is a fresh voice ... I wanted to write a book about the system of state killing by asking them to think about punishment in new ways."
Sarat said that he tries to present information in his book and his classes in similar ways. "Much is made about Amherst College's commitment to interdisciplinary work and I think much should be made about it. My work, my book, my research is nurtured and supported by that commitment. It's the kind of work that I do as a teacher when I teach 'Secrets and Lies,' 'Social Organization of Law,' 'Murder' or any other course here."
"So I hope students who read the book will recognize an intellectual style, a manner of engagement with a serious problem that crosses the boundaries of several disciplines, and that reflects both intellectual curiosity and a passionate engagement with an important problem," he added.
"When the State Kills" investigates, among other things, the role of victims in capital punishment, the effects on their families, technologies for execution, the realities of capital trials and the treatment of the death penalty in popular culture. Sarat begins the book with a commentary on one of the most recent and high-profile capital punishment cases in the United States-Timothy McVeigh.
"In almost any conversation about the death penalty, the name of McVeigh or Hitler or any horrible killer will be brought up," Sarat said. "My interest in the book is not to examine the exception case but the mundane operation of the system of state killing and its impact on our politics, law and culture."
"I conclude the book by assessing the prospects for the abolition of punishment in the United States," he continued. "In all of this, I want to bring readers closer to the daily operation of the system of capital punishment. I want to give them a sense of what it's really like-not as an abstraction or as a matter of policy-but how it touches the lives of the people of institutions who are asked to administer the system of state killing."
Sarat said that closely examining capital punishment revealed to him what he believes is its effect on anyone who is in any way associated to this form of state killing. "To study and think about capital punishment close up in the way in which I did it is to have to confront the way law itself confronts human suffering-to pain and to loss and to grief."
"There is no joy or triumph in the system of state killing for anyone," Sarat said. "To study it, to see it, to read about it requires a degree of moral seriousness that is a test for everyone."
From his research, Sarat said that he concluded that the capital punishment system is full of contradictions. "For example," Sarat said, "some claim that the death penalty exacts justifiable vengeance against those who take life; yet, at the same time, we seek ever more humane and gentle forms of execution. There is hardly an equivalence between death by murder and death by lethal injection."
Sarat said that the research for this book has gone on for nearly a decade. "I have for a long time been interested in what I call law's violence-the violence law uses or authorizes. State killing is the most intense and dramatic form of that violence," Sarat said.
The effect of capital punishment on democracy also played a role in the writing of the book, according to Sarat. "I was drawn to the subject of capital punishment because I am deeply interested in the fate of democracy and democratic practice," he said. "I wanted to understand how and why after every constitutional democracy has abolished capital punishment, the United States continues to use it."
Sarat added that he wanted to write the book because the existing literature on capital punishment did not provide new insight on this system. "I was deeply dissatisfied with what I saw to be a kind of dead end in the way that we see capital punishment," Sarat said. "I wanted to open up new avenues for the conversation about state killing."