The Global Decline of the Mandatory Death Penalty

Andrew Novak is an adjunct professor of African law at American University Washington College of Law and an adjunct professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University, where he teaches international and comparative criminal justice. He received a Master of Science in African Politics from the London School of Oriental and African Studies and a Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law. His articles on the death penalty in Sub-Saharan Africa have appeared in journals such as the Suffolk University Law Review, Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law, Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business, Indiana International and Comparative Law Review, and Boston University International Law Journal.

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Mandatory Death Penalty in Historical and Comparative Perspective; Chapter 2 An Excessive and Arbitrary Punishment: The Mandatory Death Penalty and Discretion in the United States of America; Chapter 3 Restricting the Death Penalty to the “Rarest of the Rare”: The Origins of a Discretionary Death Penalty in India and Bangladesh; Chapter 4 A Successful Experiment: The Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty in the Commonwealth Caribbean; Chapter 5 The Holdouts: The Survival of the Mandatory Death Penalty in Malaysia and Singapore; Chapter 6 The New Frontier: Constitutional Challenges to the Mandatory Death Penalty in Sub-Saharan Africa; Chapter 7 The Doctrine of Extenuating Circumstances: The Rise of Judicial Sentencing Discretion in Southern Africa; Chapter 8 Conclusion: After the Mandatory Death Penalty;