The contributions in this book lend a multifaceted analysis to a topic that long has been a darling and a conundrum of legal scholars and practitioners alike:' where precisely does the death penalty fit into the larger jurisprudence of justice and punishment? The question might be asked in different ways: What role does the death penalty play in shaping both our system and our concepts of punishment or justice? Is that role still valuable? Or has the pursuit of this ultimate punishment left us, as a society, perpetually strung up between the possibilities of getting it wrong - meting out the punishment unjustly, arbitrarily, unconstitutionally, or to the innocent - and failing to punish enough to deter crime and to restore social order?