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Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French. The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)
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Notes
Denis Lacorne. “The Barbaric Americans,” Wilson Quaterly 25 (Spring 2001): 52.
The phrase is from James Whitman. See James Q. Whitman, Harsh Justice: Criminal Punishment and the Widening Divide between America and Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
See for instance in bibliography: Whitman (2003), Zimring (2003), Garland (2001) and Steiker (2002). For a critique of the notion of “exceptionalism” and a reflection on transnational history, see Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).
The death penalty was abolished in Italy in 1948, in Finland and Germany in 1949, in Austria in 1968, in the United Kingdom in 1969, in Sweden in 1972, and in Portugal in 1976. See: Council of Europe, ed., The Death Penalty. Beyond Abolition (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2004), 7. On European abolitionism and the cultural construction of Europe as a death penalty-free zone, see Evi Girling, “European Identity and the Mission Against the Death Penalty in the United States.” in Austin Sarat and Christian Boulanger, eds., The Cultural Lives of Capital Punishment. Comparative Perspectives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 112-128.
See Cécile Toqué Pichon,
L’abolition de la peine de mort en France. La “loi Badinter”. (Paris: Panthéon, 2006); Julie
Le Quang Sang, La loi et le bourreau: la peine de mort en débats: 1870-1985 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001); Sandrine Costa,
La peine de mort: de Voltaire à Badinter (Paris: Éditions Flammarion, 2001).
Between 1967 and 1976, there were no executions in the United States, while seven were performed in France.
Sarat & Boulanger, The Cultural Lives, 1.
The newspapers reviewed for this paper were: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Le Nouvel Observateur, L’Express, Le Point, La Croix, Le Canard Enchaîné, L’Humanité, France Soir, as well as the television news of channel 1 and 2. Clippings were also consulted from Minute, L’Aurore, Est Éclair, Le Petit Parisien, Libération-Champagne and Politique hebdo, available in Documentation Francaise, ed., L’abolition de la peine de mort (Paris: La Documentation Francaise, 1987). Most newspapers reviewed were either in favor of abolition or neutral. Some were adamantly retentionist (for instance Minute, politically on the far right) while others only showed support for the death penalty during the Buffet and Bontems case (the local press in particular).
Lacorne, “The Barbaric”, 51.
Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 231. The quotation is from the New Republic.
The gradual decline in executions and the rise of abolitionist voices within and without the United States also played a role in the decision. See Herbert H. Haines, Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994 (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 21.
Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 1. The French president, Georges Pompidou, had commuted all death sentences following his election in 1969.
Toqué Pichon, L’abolition, 62.
Le Monde ran on its front page two articles—one on the Supreme Court decision, the other on the combined analysis of the American situation and Buffet and Bontems’ death sentences—under the same overarching title: “A Few Hours Away,” Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 1.
Le Figaro, June 30, 1972, 1.
La Croix, July 1, 1972, 1; Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 1.
Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 12.
Le Point, December 4 1972, 64. The article was published shortly after the execution of Buffet and Bontems, which was performed on November 28 1972.
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation and Civilization (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994 [1939])
La Croix, July 1, 1972, 1; Le Figaro, June 30, 1972, 1.
See Jurgen Martschukat, “Nineteenth-Century Executions as Performances of Law, Death, and Civilization,” in Sarat and Boulanger, The Cultural Lives, 49-91.
The common platform of the Left released in June 1972 condemned the death penalty. The Catholic church eventually denounced it in an article published on January 23 1977, in the Observatore Romano. (Julie Le Quang Sang, La loi et le bourreau: la peine de mort en débats (1870-1985) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001), 119 and 128).
A recent example of this argument can be found in The Council of Europe, The Death Penalty: Beyond Abolition (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2004), 8, where the death penalty was declared “not to have a place in a civilized society.”
Toqué Pichon, L’abolition, 118-120.
Mende is a French commune in the department of Lozère.
Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 1. See also Le Figaro, November 29, 1972, 5.
L’Express, July 3-9, 1972, 38.
Le Canard enchaîné, June 5, 1972, 4.
France Soir, July 1, 1972, 3.
For a reflection on the “ethical war” between France and the United States, see Lacorne, “The Barbaric”, 53.
Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
Banner, The Death Penalty, 242-243. For an account of international reactions to the Sacco-Vanzetti affair, see Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair.
Le Monde, July 1, 1972, 1.
See in bibliography Portes (1990), Rupnik and Toinet (1986), Revel (2002), Mathé (2000), Roger (2005).
Le Canard enchaîné, June 5, 1972, 4.
Banner, The Death Penalty, 268-271; L’Humanité, June 30, 1972, 1.
L’Humanité, June 30, 1972, 1; 585 American prisoners were on death row at the time of the decision. . Philippe Roger contends that anti-American discourse was adopted by the French Left shortly after World War II. The condemnation of the United States became a constant in communist discourse, as exemplified in this case. Philippe Roger, The American Enemy: a Story of French anti-Americanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 327.
Banner, The Death Penalty, 267-305; France Soir ran a short article on the decision as well, see France Soir, July 4, 1976, 3.
Le Monde, July 4, 1976, 2
No execution had taken place in 1974 and 1975 as Valery Giscard d’Estaing had commuted most death sentences to life imprisonment. See Julie Le Quang Sang, La loi et le bourreau, 258.
Toqué Pichon, L’abolition, 66.
L’Express, January 24-30, 1977, 56.
See Le Figaro, January 18, 1972, 11.
Le Figaro, January 18, 1977, 11. Soyer had already used the California situation to support the retentionist side shortly after the execution of Buffet and Bontems in an op-ed published by Le Figaro, November 29, 1972, 5.
Michel Poniatowski had made his opinion clear on the radio station RTL on February 19 1976. La Documentation Francaise, L’abolition de la peine de mort, 38.
L’Humanité, January 18, 1977, 10.
January 17, 1977, Channel 2, Journal télévisé, 20h.
Le Monde, July 4, 1976, 2; Le Monde, January 18, 1977, 13.
There were two executions in 1977. The last convict executed was Hamida Djandoubi on September 10 1977.
Emphasis in the original. Le Nouvel Observateur, November 20-26, 1972, 40.
L’Express, November 27-December 3, 1972, 75.
L’Express, January 24-30, 1977, 56.
Le Monde, January 23-24, 1977, 28; Le Nouvel Observateur, January 24, 1977, 22. L’Aurore and L’Est Éclair used the same device to convey the imminence of abolition: “Is it the abolition of the death penalty?” asked the journalist in Est Éclair while L’Aurore wondered if “the members of the Troyes Jury ha[d] condemned the Executioner.” L’Aurore, January 22-23, 1977, 16; L’Est Éclair, January 21, 1977, 1.
Franklin E. Zimring, “The Executioner’s Dissonant Song: On Capital Punishment and American Values,” in Austin Sarat, ed., The Killing State. Capital Punishment in Law, Politics, and Culture (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 139.
Girling, “European Identity,” 112.
Pierre Guerlain, Miroirs transatlantiques: La France et les Etats-Unis entre passions et indifférences (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), 7.
Austin Sarat, “The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment: Responsibility and Representation in Dead Man Walking and Last Dance,” in Sarat, The Killing State, 229.
Richard Primus, “A Brooding Omnipresence: Totalitarianism in Postwar Constitutional Thought,” Yale Law Journal 106 (1996): 423.
Girling, “European Identity.”
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