The lat­est edi­tion of The American Prospect fea­tures a series of arti­cles by promi­nent writ­ers and human rights lead­ers regard­ing the effect of the inter­na­tion­al move­ment for human rights on the U.S. Two of the arti­cles high­light U.S. death penal­ty poli­cies. Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh points out the con­flict between the U.S.‘s efforts to sup­port inter­na­tion­al human rights and our domes­tic prac­tices such as the use of the juve­nile death penal­ty. ​“In my view, by far the most dan­ger­ous and destruc­tive form of American excep­tion­al­ism is the asser­ta­tion of dou­ble stan­dards. For by embrac­ing dou­ble stan­dards, the United States invari­ably ends up not on the high­er rung but on the low­er rung with hor­rid bed­fel­lows — for exam­ple, such coun­tries as Iran, Nigeria, and Saudia Arabia, the only oth­er nations that have not in prac­tice either abol­ished or declared a mora­to­ri­um on the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty on juve­nile offend­ers.”

A sec­ond arti­cle, Criminal Justice and the Erosion of Rights by human rights schol­ar Deborah Pearlstein, exam­ines the impact of leg­is­la­tion such as the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and The PATRIOT Act on cap­i­tal cas­es. Pearlstein notes, ​“While human-rights observers have right­ly focused on ter­ror­ism-relat­ed devel­op­ments in the U.S. crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, the trend toward lim­it­ed pro­ce­dur­al pro­tec­tions for defen­dants and a shrink­ing judi­cial role well pre­dates the September 11 attacks. Indeed, secu­ri­ty has been a cen­tral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for rights-lim­it­ing changes in the crim­i­nal-jus­tice sys­tem for decades.” Among the oth­er authors in the series are Anthony Lewis, John Shattuck, Gay McDougall, Cass Sunstein, Gara LaMarche, and Mary Robinson. (The American Prospect, October 2004) See International Death Penalty, Juvenile Death Penalty, and Federal Death Penalty.

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