¶ … Death Penalty: An on-going Debate on Ethics and Morality

The topic examined in this assignment was the death penalty. In this country, this issue is one of constant debate, as it exists in half the country (roughly), but not in the other half. The first paper, as mentioned, analyzed three articles, all of which were subsequently described and included in the copy in order to see how the death penalty was described by intellectuals, and what arguments they gave as to its use, or lack thereof. This paper will utilize Universal Intellectual Standards (UIS) to critically review and re-evaluate the rational utilized in the previous assignment.

Firstly, clarity is very important in this assignment. The reason why the results here were further stratified was because the initial results were lacking in clarity. According to the UIS, clarity is the fist that should be applied to any work, in order to ensure its quality. Clarity is needed to see whether the information is accurate and relevant, which gives an analysis its best and most honest basis. Thus, when the topic of death penalty was typed firstly into the library website, there were too many results, with too little clarity. Thus, in order to remedy this defect, the results were reclassified by date, or chronologically, and this helped refine the research to most relevant and most current.

Another important facet of the UIS is accuracy. Each of the three articles spoke about accuracy, yet the descriptions did not focus wholly on this. For instance, in the first article, accuracy was not a facet to be stressed, for this article was a matter of opinion more than anything. Though the author utilizes legal terms to explain his opinion, these were not truly defined in...

The description of the article, however, is quite clear and quite in depth.
With regards to this latter facet, depth, as well as its related counterpart, relevance, the article does a good job, and the summary covers it as well. The relevance is clearly present, for the article deals directly with the death penalty, and due to the fact that the article is quite complex, this is also covered. Furthermore, the article has good logical arguments, and a sound description of them; it just lacks these in number. Furthermore, this first article seems a bit biased, so there are some questions as to its fairness. These latter concepts were not wholly addressed in the description; instead the first assignment focused more on a comprehensive summary, but when one looks back, it becomes evident that these concepts should be further elucidated.

In the second article, Kenneth Cooper explains why the death penalty still exists in the U.S. He claims that the evolution of the practice was shaped by various values, entrenched in the American system, which are still holding up the U.S. system, and which involve, among other concepts, racist views of some Americans. Therefore, Cooper argues for an ever…