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The Pope vs. the President: Capital Punishment

1 Jul 2026

Updated: 30 Jun 2026

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses the contrasting positions of Pope Leo XIV and President Donald Trump on capital punishment, set against the backdrop of the Justice Department’s April 2026 announcement to restart and expand federal executions. Professor Sarat argues that the Pope’s moral condemnation of the death penalty as an affront to human dignity—offered without anger or political calculation—exposes the cruelty underlying the Trump administration’s embrace of capital punishment and should reinvigorate the abolition movement in the United States.

Author: Vikram David Amar

Vikram David Amar

Vikram Amar is the Daniel J. Dykstra Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Law at the King Hall UC Davis Law School. Amar returned to UC Davis in 2023 after serving for eight years as the... more

Author: Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan

Neil H. Buchanan, an economist and legal scholar, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He is also... more

Author: John Dean

John Dean

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the... more

Author: Michael C. Dorf

Michael C. Dorf

Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School. He has written hundreds of popular essays, dozens of scholarly articles, and six books on constitutional... more

Author: Samuel Estreicher

Samuel Estreicher

Samuel Estreicher is Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law and Director of the Center of Labor and Employment Law and Institute of Judicial Administration at New York University School of Law. He... more

Author: Leslie C. Griffin

Leslie C. Griffin

Dr. Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd School of Law. Prof. Griffin, who teaches constitutional law and bioethics, is known for... more

Author: Joanna L. Grossman

Joanna L. Grossman

Joanna L. Grossman is the Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and Law at SMU Dedman School of Law and is currently serving as the Herman Phleger Visiting Professor at Stanford Law School. ... more

Author: Marci A. Hamilton

Marci A. Hamilton

Professor Marci A. Hamilton is a Professor of Practice in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the founder and CVO of CHILD USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit academic think... more

Author: Joseph Margulies

Joseph Margulies

Mr. Margulies is a Professor of Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), involving detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, and in Geren v. Omar... more

Author: Austin Sarat

Austin Sarat

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.Professor Sarat founded both Amherst College’s Department of Law,... more

Author: Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1968. Born in... more

Author: Lesley Wexler

Lesley Wexler

Lesley Wexler is a Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Immediately prior to taking the position at Illinois, Wexler was a Professor of Law at Florida State University,... more