Law in Contemporary Society

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PietroSignoracci-FirstPaper 3 - 18 Mar 2008 - Main.IanSullivan
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A Functional Analysis of Audiences to Executions
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  In other cases, especially where the victims are few and did not endure tremendous suffering, surviving family members might experience satisfaction or resolution. This result would coincide with the functional analysis of state executions put forth by Rene Girard in Violence and the Sacred. According to Girard, the state employs capital punishment so as to terminate the potentially catastrophic cycle of reciprocal vengeance that would naturally follow the first violent act. But by absorbing private vengeance and transforming it into a legitimized, public form, the state robs the original would-be avenger of a certain satisfaction that would come with personally fulfilling what he considers a fundamental obligation. Even if this desire is purely subconscious, it can be at least partially satiated through the act of witnessing the killing, and vigilantism is avoided—in other words, those who might take the law into their own hands are instead permitted to take it in with their own eyes.

Thus, every state execution witnessed by an assenting private audience is a relegitimization of the state’s process of killing, and the state improves the odds of assent by making the victims’ family members the most important portion of the audience.

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Revision 3r3 - 18 Mar 2008 - 21:26:21 - IanSullivan
Revision 2r2 - 05 Mar 2008 - 21:48:32 - IanSullivan
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