Academic report

Little Furmans Everywhere: State Court Intervention and the Decline of the American Death Penalty

By Carol S. Steiker & Jordan M. Steiker, on 1 September 2022

Trend Towards Abolition



This article retraces the evolution and recent decline of death peanlty in the United States, notablt through state court interventions. These dynamics between judicial and political action illuminate the importance of state court intervention in the story of the American death penalty’s precipitous decline, which has tended to foreground other institutional actors and to neglect the complex interactions among branches of government. State judicial rulings, though often highly technical and, therefore, less visible and accessible to the public, have been a pervasive and powerful force in the two-decade-long diminution of the practice of capital punishment across the United States.

  • Document type Academic report
  • Countries list United States
  • Themes list Trend Towards Abolition



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