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| Cornell Law Library |
A new center at Cornell Law School aims to help eliminate the death penalty across the globe through research and lawyer training.
The school on Tuesday announced the launch of the Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide - an initiative made possible by a $3.2 million grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies, the private foundation of university alum Chuck Feeney, founder of the Duty Free Shoppers Group.
The center, led by Cornell professor Sandra Babcock, aspires to help end capital punishment internationally by highlighting the flaws in the application of the death penalty worldwide, and by strengthening the training of defense lawyers who handle such cases. Administrators say it's the 1st center of its kind in the United States. A handful of schools have domestic-focused death penalty centers or death penalty clinics, including the University of Texas School of Law; Yale Law School; Harvard Law School; and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. The new center will elevate the international death penalty research Cornell Law faculty started in 2011.
"I think this is the right moment for a center like this to explicitly focus on the convergence of national and international [death penalty abolition] movements and fill in the gaps in the research that's being down around the world," Babcock said.
The centerpiece of the initiative is a summer institute for capital defense lawyers around the world to convene and share notes on effective defense strategies. The first institute will convene death penalty defense lawyers from sub-Saharan Africa, where the judicial system is plagued by a lack of resources, Babcock said. Future conferences will focus on other regions. "The resources available to lawyers around the world who are working on these issues is really nonexistent," she said.
The center also will conduct research on the death penalty and maintain a free online database on capital punishment law and practices around the world. Among the items on the center's research agenda are how discrimination impacts Latinos facing the death penalty in the United States, and the gathering of information on the death penalty and vulnerable groups, such as women and people with metal illnesses or intellectual disabilities.
The center will house law school clinics focused on the international death penalty and human rights.
"Capital punishment has emerged as one of the most important human rights issues in the 21st century, and I am pleased that the Atlantic Philanthropies has recognized Cornell Law School's leading role, globally, in this debate," said law Dean Eduardo Penalver.
Feeney, 85, graduated from Cornell University in 1956, and co-founded the Duty Free Shoppers Group - the airport-based purveyor of perfume, booze and candy - 4 years later. He transferred his nearly 39 % ownership in the company to the Atlantic Philanthropies in 1984, which is focused on funding health and social programs around the world. Feeney, though the foundation, had donated about $100 million to Cornell University.
Source: New York Law Journal, October 26, 2016
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