Apr 12
"Executing Freedom" Daniel LaChance '01
Daniel LaChance '01 is an Assistant Professor of History and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Law and the Humanities at Emory University. His work examines the sources, meaning, and effects of the “punitive turn” in the United States, the ratcheting up of incarceration and other forms of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. Articles he has written on this topic have appeared in the journals Law and Social Inquiry, Punishment and Society, and Law, Culture, and the Humanities. His first book, Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States, was published in the fall of 2016 by the University of Chicago Press. The book examines the decline of the American death penalty in the years following World War II, its revival in the 1970s, and its subsequent use over the past thirty years. In it, he argues that shifting ideas about the nature of freedom reshaped the dominant meaning of capital punishment in America. LaChance has also contributed to national discussions on the past and present of the American death penalty through opinion pieces and news analyses published by The New York Times, The New Republic, and Newsweek.