Hugo Adam Bedau

Hugo Adam Bedau (born September 23, 1926) is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Tufts University, and is best known for his work on capital punishment. He has been called a "leading anti-death-penalty scholar" by Stuart Taylor Jr., who has quoted Bedau as saying "I'll let the criminal justice system execute all the McVeighs they can capture, provided they'd sentence to prison all the people who are not like McVeigh."[1]

Bedau gained his PhD from Harvard University in 1961 and subsequently taught at Dartmouth College, Princeton University and Reed College before joining Tufts in 1966. He retired in 1999.[2] Bedau is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union,[3] for whom he has written on the death penalty.[4]

He is author of The Death Penalty in America (1st edition, 1964; 4th edition, 1997)The Courts, the Constitution, and Capital Punishment (1977), Death is Different (1987), and Killing as Punishment (2004), and co-author of In Spite of Innocence (1992). On the occasion of Bedau's retirement, Norman Daniels said of The Death Penalty in America: "It is the premier example in this century of the systematic application of academic philosophical skills to a practical issue, and the flood of work in practical ethics that has followed can rightfully cite Hugo's work as its starting point".[3]

See also

References

  1. ^ Taylor Jr., Stuart (May 31, 2001). "Does the death penalty save innocent lives?". National Journal. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/taylor2001-05-31.htm. Retrieved December 1, 2009. 
  2. ^ "Hugo A. Bedau". Tufts University. Archived from the original on February 23, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080223230335/http://ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/bedau.shtml. Retrieved May 28, 2008. 
  3. ^ a b Norman Daniels (May 17, 1999). "Resolution on the retirement of Hugo Adam Bedau adopted by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Tufts University". Tufts University. Archived from the original on March 21, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080321034347/ase.tufts.edu/philosophy/people/hugo.htm. Retrieved May 28, 2008. 
  4. ^ Hugo Adam Bedau (July 1992). "The Case Against the Death Penalty". American Civil Liberties Union. http://users.rcn.com/mwood/deathpen.html. Retrieved May 28, 2008. 

External links