The contradiction of human dignity: Slavery and capital punishment in American justice

“ The law of justice is unquestionable a life for a life. Yet the active principle of life is so beautiful a fact, so mysterious, so baffling in all its workings, so insoluble even to science -- that is so profoundly bent upon concealing it -- that the scientist confronted with this problem must cry out "Do not destroy that beauty which it is our despair to solve ”

“ Justice is the pillar that upholds the whole fabric of human society, and mercy is the genial ray which cheers and warms the habitations of men. The perfection of our social character consists in properly tempering the two with one another; in holding that middle course which admits of our being just without being rigid, and allows us to be generous without being unjust. May all the citizens of America be found in the performance of such social duties as will secure them peace and happiness in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting! ”

“ The American peoples have acknowledged the dignity of the individual, and their national constitutions recognize that juridical and political institutions, which regulate life in human society, have as their principal aim the protection of the essential rights of man and the creation of circumstances that will permit him to achieve spiritual and material progress and attain happiness ”

“ By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Human rights are the cornerstone of American democracy. The founders of our democracy, in their wisdom, recognized the inherent dignity of every human being and enshrined in the Bill of Rights our profound commitment to freedom of speech, religion, and assembly and the right to due process and a fair trial. Through more than two centuries of challenge and change, these guiding principles have sustained us. They form the common ground on which our racial, religious, and ethnic diversity can flourish. ”

“ Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I will fight for them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse her my allegiance, and express contempt for her courts.
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable- of a bad one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad and all merely material stock should lose some of its value, for that only compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose that the value of life itself should be diminished! ”

“ The State has been part of this degeneration, not only because of its role in the conflicts of the past, but also by retaining punishments which did not testify to a high regard for the dignity of the person and the value of every human life.
[219] ⁠The primacy of the right to life and its relationship to punishment needs to be emphasized also in view of our constitutional history. The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty meant, virtually, that the State could do anything, enact any law, subject only to procedural correctness. ”

“ Nothing against Slavery can be unconstitutional. It is hesitation that is unconstitutional.
And yet Slavery still exists, in defiance of all these requirements; nay, more, in defiance of reason and justice, which can never be disobeyed with impunity, it exists, the perpetual spoiler of human rights and disturber of the public peace, degrading master as well as slave, corrupting society, weakening government, impoverishing the very soil itself, and impairing the natural resources of the country. ”

“ If slaves are recognized as property by the Constitution, of course no local or State law can either prevent property being carried through an individual State or Territory, or forbid its being sold as such wherever its owner may choose to hold it. This is all involved in the present decision; but let a single case draw from the Court an official judgment that slaves can be held and protected under National law, and we shall see men buying slaves for the New York market. There will be no legal power to prevent it. ”

“ This mode of legal execution was brought forward by me owning to the fact that it is the quickest and most certain of all death penalties. Nevertheless I am for the banishment of this most barbarous practice. This relic of the dark ages is one of the evils afflicting the enlightened civilized nations of the present era.
In reality capital punishment is only legalized murder. Justice does not go with human passions, and a perfectly dispassionate and unbiased judgment is a myth. The chief aim with a true surgeon is to save a limb, not take it off. ”

“ We repeat it, the reduction of persons to things; not robbing a man of privileges, but of himself; not loading with burdens, but making him a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating personality; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking him into an implement of labor; not abridging his human comforts, but abrogating his human nature; not depriving an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being of attributes, uncreating a MAN to make room for a thing! ”

“ The true scientific solution of the difficulty is to redeem the murderer, like other criminals, and to give him a change to work out his salvation on principles dependent upon a true civilization, rather than that bequeathed to us from the middle ages.
When we can produce Life let us take it; until then let us utilize the punishment of criminals for the benefit of the state. As Walpole said, "The worst use to which you can put a man is to hang him."
The greatest argument against capital punishment is that the principle of life must not be violated. ”

“ The State should not make itself guilty of conduct which violates that which it is in the community's interests to nurture. The Constitution, in deference to our humanity and sense of dignity, does not allow us to kill in cold blood in order to deter others from killing. Nor does it allow us to kill criminals simply to get even with them." [11] We are not to stoop to the level of the criminal.
[234] ⁠It follows from the remarks above that as a punishment the death penalty is a violation of the right to life. It is cruel, inhuman and degrading. It is also a severe affront to human dignity. ”

“ America, deeper in my love and higher in my esteem than ever before, newly illustrated in worth, newly proven to be capable still, in some directions, of exceeding magnanimity, open your eyes that your feet may have guidance, now when there is such need! Open your eyes to see, that, if you deliberately deny justice and human recognition to one innocent soul in all your borders, you stab at your own existence; for, in violating the unity of humanity, you break the principle that makes you a nation and alive. Give justice to black and white, recognize man as man ”

“ If capital punishment were abolished, would murderers suffer any less, since they would receive not only the punishment still open to infliction by the law but also the retribution? In Thibet, for the citizens of which we feel so great a contempt, there is a reverence for that very principle of life that our civilization might do well to follow in many respects, and when where, if there are willing to suffer from the inroads of vermin, at least every man's life is sacred to the law that created him. ”

“ In what a striking manner does that talk of your contemporaries about limiting the suffrage to correspond with the economic position of citizens illustrate the failure of even the most intelligent classes in your time to grasp the full significance of the democratic faith which they professed! The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual. That dignity, consisting in the quality of human nature, is essentially the same in all individuals, and therefore equality is the vital principle of democracy. ”

“ I venture to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice.
Men, equal in the dignity of their persons and equal before the law, should be equal in their conditions,—such is the thesis which I maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, “What is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government.”
The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. ”

“ This concept of human life is at the centre of our constitutional values. The constitution seeks to establish a society where the individual value of each member of the community is recognised and treasured. The right to life is central to such a society.
[327] ⁠The right to life, thus understood, incorporates the right to dignity. So the rights to human dignity and life are entwined. The right to life is more than existence, it is a right to be treated as a human being with dignity: without dignity, human life is substantially diminished. Without life, there cannot be dignity. ”

“ Respect for human dignity is one such value; acknowledging it includes an acceptance by society that "... even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity." [89]
[78] ⁠ The State sought to strengthen its argument by pointing out the comparative convenience of juvenile whipping as a punishment: it satisfied criteria for punishment, while at the same time affording the courts a reasonable sentencing option ”

“ The same principle produces, in many instances, our sentiments of morals, as well as those of beauty. No virtue is more esteem'd than justice, and no vice more detested than injustice; nor are there any qualities, which go farther to the fixing the character, either as amiable or odious. Now justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind ”

“ On the other hand, justice is essentially a social virtue. It arises in the relation of individual to individual in a society. The just man observes the principles of social harmony and equity, and practises fairness and honesty in his dealings with all men. And justice is manifested by the state which has so organised its social life that all its citizens live in harmony.
Two aspects of justice were distinguished by Aristotle—justice as distributive and justice as corrective. Distributive justice in the state demands that all men should be, treated equitably in accordance with their merits. ”

“ The thesis I have endeavored to support in these lectures, so far as I have a thesis, is this: (1) that, after all, human justice consists in securing to each individual as much liberty of action in the exercise of his physical and mental powers and as much liberty to enjoy the fruits of such action as is consistent with like liberty for other individuals, and with such restrictions only as are necessary for the welfare of society as a whole without discrimination for or against any individual ”

“ And so, it must be added, are the sanctions of ethics and moral law. It is when we turn to the state, to the moral personality of the nation, that we encounter other laws and living forces which restore what an empirical science or a transcendental humanitarianism has broken down. Here the supreme test is spiritual—the well-being of the nationality. The state must build upon the family as its corner-stone; it must enforce those moral laws which the history of nations, as well as human experience in its best estate, reveal to be the inmost expression of the normal life of man. ”

“ No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture. But America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law; limits on the power of the state; respect for women; private property; free speech; equal justice; and religious tolerance. (Applause.)
America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment. ”

“ The accomplishment of the many tasks I have alluded to requires the continuous strengthening of the spiritual, intellectual, and economic sinews of American life. The steady purpose of our society is to assure justice, before God, for every individual. We must be ever alert that freedom does not wither through the careless amassing of restrictive controls or the lack of courage to deal boldly with the giant issues of the day. ”

“ It is only by a strict adherence to the direction they indicate and by restraint within the limitations they fix that we can furnish proof to the world of the fitness of the American people for self-government.
The equal and exact justice of which we boast as the underlying principle of our institutions should not be confined to the relations of our citizens to each other. ”

“ It matters not what is the theory of the government, if the practice of the government be unjust and tyrannical. We rise in rebellion against a despotism incomparably more dreadful than that which induced the colonists to take up arms against the mother country; not on account of a three-penny tax on tea, but because fetters of living iron are fastened on the limbs of millions of our countrymen, and our most sacred rights are trampled in the dust. As citizens of the State, we appeal to the State in vain for protection and redress. ”

“ But in lower Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, the general state of society as it respects the successful triumph of passion over law, and the consequent and universal insecurity of life is, in the main, very similar to that of the states already considered. ”

“ Resolved, That the resolution above named is an assumption of power and authority at variance with the spirit and intent of the Constitution of the United States, and injurious to the cause of freedom and free institutions; that it does violence to the inherent, absolute, and inalienable rights of man; and that it tends, essentially, to impair those fundamental principles of natural justice and natural law which are antecedent to any written constitutions of government, independent of them all, and essential to the security of freedom in a state. ”

“ Every principle of justice and equity requires, that, those who are totally unprotected by birth, station, wealth, friends, influence, and popular favor, and especially those who are the innocent objects of public contempt and prejudice, should be more vigilantly protected by law, than those who are so fortified by defence, that they have far less need of legal protection; yet the poor slave who is fortified by none of these personal bulwarks, is denied the protection of law, while the master, surrounded by them all, is panoplied in the mail of legal protection, even to the hair of his head ”

“ Therefore, every word spoken, every line written, every act performed, that keeps the breath of life, for a moment, in slavery, is against the existence and perpetuity of democratic institutions against the dignity of the toiling millions of America—against the liberty, the peace, the honor, the renown, and the life of the Nation. In the lights of to-day that flash upon us from camp and battle-field, the loyal eye, heart, and brain of America sees and feels and realizes that THE DEATH OF SLAVERY IS THE LIFE OF THE NATION! ”

“ We will fulfill the letter, so far as practicable, of that unjust, inhuman, oppressive and unconstitutional law, so far as we can without violating principle; but we cannot sacrifice every principle of human right at the behest of corrupt, unreasoning and unprincipled men; we cannot violate the highest and noblest principles of human nature and make pariahs and outcasts of high-minded, virtuous and honorable women, nor sacrifice at the shrine of popular clamor the highest and noblest principles of humanity! ”

“ The making of a man and citizen is a tremendous undertaking, and so long as the law acts not as a protector and developer of childhood and youth into manhood, saving it from the lurking and insidious foes to heath and virtues that are the true menace of our civilization, so long criminals and murderers will be made by the very law that later steps in to condemn them.
The state is inflicting capital punishment upon a murderer is like the false mother in the judgment of Solomon -- she prefers a dead son to a son whom she can reclaim by justice seasoned with mercy. ”

“ Capital punishment has been abolished in Italy, Norway, Roumania, Holland, Portugal and Russia, while in Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria and several of the states of northern Germany the rulers refuse to sign death warrants, and criminals, thought sentenced to death, are virtually made life prisoners.
It will amaze many people to learn that there is no capital punishment in Russia, yet it is a fact. Murderers and traitors are sentenced to the mines in Siberia, but they are not put to death unless tried by court-martial in a military or naval court, in which case they are shot to death. ”

“ And our so-called civilization has found no improvement upon this system.
France, foremost, calls the halt to capital punishment. The American nation cannot help but follow this lead.
Capital Punishment's Progress Toward Abolition As man has become gradually more and more civilized he has tempered with mercy the administration of his justice. To-day criminals are put to death the world over by methods that are as instantaneous as possible. Torture which was until very recently a part of everday execution, is now looked upon with horror. ”

“ The laws of any country which have for their object the correction and regulation of human action and to determine between the right and the wrong are progressive in their nature, like other institutions of the world. France has taken the lead among nations by abolishing the death sentence -- the most barbarous of all laws -- be it ever said to her credit!
I have always leaned toward the side of that justice which demands that capital punishment be abolished. I have, however, fathered electrocution as the most humane method of execution, and this method has become the law of several states. ”

“ The methods of execution now used by the several nations are many. Great Britain, Austria, and several of the United States still cling to hanging. The theory of the gallows is that the drop breaks the criminal's neck and kills him instantly, but this holds true only when the knot is perfectly adjusted; when, as is so often the case, some trilfing maladroitness in the tying of the "hangman's knot," the victim's neck is not broken and he simply strangles to death. ”

“ I will analyze the punishment of death in terms of the principles [p286] set out above and the cumulative test to which they lead: it is a denial of human dignity for the State arbitrarily to subject a person to an unusually severe punishment that society has indicated it does not regard as acceptable, and that cannot be shown to serve any penal purpose more effectively than a significantly less drastic punishment. Under these principles and this test, death is today a "cruel and unusual" punishment. Death is a unique punishment in the United States. ”

“ The same reason which justified the State at first in protecting person and property against violence, justified it yesterday in abolishing slavery, justifies it to-day in abolishing ignorance, and will justify it to-morrow in abolishing other degrading conditions of life. The public sense of human dignity may grow from age to age and be offended to-morrow by what it tolerates to-day, but the principle of sound intervention is all through the same—that the proposed measure is necessary to enable men to live the true life of a man and fulfil the proper ends of rational being. ”