The co-author of Sunday's New York Times OpEd, "Executions Should Be Televised," has more in a post at his Above the Law blog.
Transparency has been a major theme of my writing over the years. With my first blog, Underneath Their Robes, I tried to shed light on the often opaque federal judiciary. Here at Above the Law, my colleagues and I reveal some of the secrets that law firms and law schools don’t want the public to know. The criminal justice system could benefit from greater transparency as well.
Although there are occasions when secrecy is truly required, transparency is generally a good thing. Having more information available helps people make more-informed decisions. If transparency can help young people decide whether to attend law school, and if it can help lawyers decide which firms to work for, surely transparency can and should be applied to something as important as capital punishment.
Looking the death penalty in the eye can help citizens decide whether they support capital punishment and, if so, how it should be implemented.
And:
P.S. We explore the idea of making executions public in greater depth in an article in the Tennessee Law Review (currently available on Lexis).
The Shemtob-Lat OpEd is noted at the link.
Comments