Death Penalty in Theories and Ideologies of Criminal Justice

A Note on Ethiopian Criminal Law

Abstract

Death penalty is one of the most contentious subject of ethical,
ideological and policy debate in criminal jurisprudence. This debate is
largely reflected in the varying positions taken by schools of thought
and ideological camps over the causes of crimes and purpose of
criminal punishment. Two theoretical schools of thought namely, the
classical and the positivist schools, and three political ideologies
predominate the scholarly debate thereby including criminal justice
polices and laws of different countries over the ages. This paper aims
to briefly examine the Ethiopian criminal law on death penalty in light
of the dominant theories and ideologies of criminal justice. While the
existence of death penalty in Ethiopia is against the classical as well as
positivist school, the legal limitations on the imposition and execution
of death penalty exhibit a mixture of classical and positivist schools. On
the ideological dimension, the Ethiopian criminal law blends
conservative and liberal ideology.