In the current New York Review of Books, former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens reviews David Garland’s Peculiar Institution. The book is about the death penalty but situated in the context of historical and cultural differences between the US and Europe. As is typical for NYRB reviews, it is as much an independent essay on the general topic as it is a narrow review of the book at hand. Given the reviewer, this is particularly interesting, since the article becomes in part a description of how Stevens switched his view from being pro- capital punishment (loosely speaking) early in his tenure on the high court to being anti- toward the end.

One interesting fact that he quotes from the book: In many states judges can overrule juries with regard to sentencing. In Alabama (where judges are elected), they are ten times more likely to overrule in favor of the death penalty; in Delaware (where judges are not elected, the same as in Europe), they are more likely to overrule in favor of the defendant. But even apart from the controversial topic, the book sounds like an interesting discourse on the importance of [idiosyncrasies in] culture on legal and social norms.